I'm trying to learn how to use the report writer and it occurs to me that there may be some great wealth of knowledge that might be shared by the masters... Would be great to have one area to find info on modifying RTM's.

Excellent, yes... but who will start the HOWTO article? We seem to have a dearth of writers.  

This work into my current project a bit. I need to add a forum section and I would like to reorder some things at the same time, mostly to put Problem Reports near the top. On that note, here is my first pass at reordering this "Evo-ERP and DBA Classic" section:
 
User Polls
EvoERP Flash Videos
Problem Reports - Repeatable
Problem Reports - Sporadic
Manufacturing
Items
Sales
Accounting
Systems Manager
Payroll
Bar Code & Hand Held Interface
Evo Menu & Evo~ERP
RTM Reports Editing
Evo2Web Extension
Installation
Suggestions for Updates
General Topics
Local User Groups
IS Tech Symposium & Training
Program Offerings
Jobs
Source Code & Programming in TAS
 
 
I would move the EziJobs/Next Gen forum to the "General" section, since it is neither DBA nor Evo. Thoughts?

Allen (NovaZyg) and Michel (JEMM) are the only two resources I know. I struggle through a few simple changes to RTMs, but mostly I bypass them and make browser-based reports.

Thanks Allen
 
I have been hunting around and I think I found a pretty good learning system at:
 
http://www.digital-metaphors.com/download/learning_reportbuilder.html
 
I'm going to give that a try. At least I will probably learn what I can't do so I don't waste time. The 125 Page PDF is written so the common man can understand. Looks pretty good at first glance.

I'm no huge fan of the built in report editor either. Not the single greatest piece of code ever written. But, it seems to work well enough for the most part.
 
For those things that it does not do there is obviously Crystal Reports. For those of us who dont' want to pay for CR there are programs like  
 
OpenRPT:
http://www.xtuple.com/openrpt
 
JasperReports:
http://jasperforge.org/plugins/project/project_home.php?group_id=102
 
OpenReports:
http://oreports.com/
 
And the list goes on. Actually, Jasper is embeddable but it's JAVA and I'm not too sure how easy it is to extend TAS with thirdparty code.

Well, we don't have Microsoft Office nor do I plan to ever purchase it. If I could get Evo and Worldship to reliably run in WINE it would be bye bye windows. I'm not about to be named MS's MVP of the year.
 
But, the OpenOffice spreadsheet program works pretty much the same. I don't really like spreadsheets though.
 
Doing web based forms can be good too. This also has the built in advantage of allowing for remote viewing if one were so inclined. But PHP wasn't really designed for such a use... I've done a bunch of PHP coding and it seems like using it for tons of reporting could create a heap of hard to read code. Not to mention that the combo between HTML and PHP has got to be harder to modify than a form based report system like CR or Jasper.
 
I think that a mixture of web based reporting and form based printed reports is the way to go. Some things lend themselves to a web based approach and some things to a form based report. I have not used JasperReports but it looks interesting and I wonder if maybe it's a good free alternative to CR.

Quote from kevind on 02/26/09 at 09:03:51:

 
Interesting! It also has Delphi components. TAS is written in Delphi so maybe that would aid in getting the two to work together.
 
It seems like there are a lot of good choices out there.

There are probably 60 modules into which you'd need to tie, several hundred fields, then a form editor, plus the time to duplicate the current reports in the new system. Yes, it does sound a bit ambitious.

In reply to Ann, I don't disagree, but I would just like to mention that DBA understood that short coming of not having reports that exactly met all the user needs years ago. They made a deal with Crystal reports and offered a custom DBA version for a steeply reduced price. That is how I came to my version of Crystal reports. It does what you need with a relatively short learning curve. The bigger problem is learning where all the data is.  
 
The problem I have with using Crystal reports is, it is run outside of EvoERP, and it would be nice to be able to run those reports through a menu item in the EVO interface.  
 
Not than any of this helps you out, but I just wanted to mention that they did at one time offer a report writer.

Wow! Such a firestorm I've started! Admittedly, I don't know the quirks of TAS - a code poet I am not. I do agree with the one module at a time thing, and finding what info lives where is the hard part for the user. However, there is already a partial build on a customizable report writing program in S-SO-O-J and in S-SA-M. The architecture already exists in system. When you use those writers, though, you are given a short list of primary sort parameters that were selected by whomever using whatever logic path had been agreed upon at the time. Open that up wider, and let the users select what they want from the get-go. Imagine, if you will, a page of columns and rows. First column lists perhaps 25 fields ( a number I pulled out of my nose). Some are data fields such as PO number, some are optionables such as date brackets. Second column lets you put an X next to the one you want to have be the primary sort parameter. Third column lets you put an X next to the one you want to be the second sort parameter. Fourth column lets you choose print order on the report by entering numbers in the rows of the fields you want. Maybe you'll want 9 items on one report, and 6 on another. You get to choose. Test run, selecting portrait or landscape format. Tweak, save and name. Since there are already reports in Evo that are "written in stone" as well as semi-customizable ones, the machinery for sorting and compiling the data is already there. To use a manufacturing analogy, the bowl feeders and chutes are already there. Let us fill the bowls we want with what we want and point the chutes where we want them to go. Glad to see such lively conversation on this topic! Ideas are the seeds from which great things grow.