Report Tool Tips and Tricks

This document is a guide to help you become more productive with the Report Tool by showing you how to address some of the more common tasks that need to be done when designing a Report.

• Using the select attribute

The select attribute enables you to filter down the set of properties for the Items returned from a query.

<Item type="Part" action="get" select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"/>

• Using the order_by attribute

The order_by attribute enables you to order the results of the query. The style sheet also supports sorting on the properties.

<Item type="Part"
action="get"
select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"
order_by="part_number"
/>

• Using the condition attribute

The condition attribute enables you to specify a condition for the properties used as search criteria. All the conditions that are allowed in SQL are allowed as the values to the condition attribute.

<Item type="Part"
action="get"
select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"
order_by="part_number">
<part_number condition="like">%123%</part_number>
</Item>

• OR’ing property values

The ＜or＞tag provides a way to logically OR property values for the search criteria.

<Item type="Part"
action="get"
select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"
order_by="part_number">
<or>
<state>Released</state>
<state>In Review</state>
</or>
</Item>

• Return Relationships in the results

You can include the ＜Relationships＞ tag and the relationship items you want to return.

<Item type="{@type}" id="{@id}" action="get" select="part_no,part_desc,part_cost">
<Relationships>
<Item type="Part EBOM" action="get" select="position,qty,related_id">
<related_id>
<Item type="Part" action="get" select="id,part_no,part_desc,part_cost">
<Relationships>
<Item type="Part AVL" action="get" select="avl_status,related_id(description,manufacturer,component_no)"/>
</Relationships>
</Item>
</related_id> 
</Item>
</Relationships>
</Item>

• Using Relationships as search criteria

You can include the ＜Relationships＞ tag to describe the search criteria for the relationship items.

<Item type="{@type}" id="{@id}" action="get" select="part_no,part_desc,part_cost">
<Relationships>
<Item type="Part EBOM" action="get" select="position,qty,related_id">
<qry condition="gt">1000</qty> 
</Item>
</Relationships>
</Item>

• Displaying a non-breaking white space

To display a non-breaking white space, use the ＜xsl:text＞ tag.

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;nbsp;</xsl:text>
Or this: &#160;

• Displaying the formatted text property

To display formatted text (the marked-up text) property value in XSLT, use the disable-output-escaping attribute with the ＜xsl:value-of＞ tag. The marked-up text for the formatted text property is a complete HTML document and only the content for the BODY tag is required.

<xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select=".//BODY/*"/>

• Displaying nested tables for relationships

To display the relationship Items for nested tables, reduce the XPath to the relative path based on the context node for the ＜xsl:for-each＞ loop that the nested relationships table is in.

<xsl:for-each select="Relationships/Item">
<xsl:for-each select="related_id/Item/Relationships/Item">
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>

• Resizing the Report window

To resize the report window, add an onload callback function for the HTML page. Add the following code before the ＜body＞ tag:

<script>
onload = function()
{
top.window.resizeTo(800,600);
}
</script>

• Showing a different value based on the value for a property

To show a different value in the Report based on the actual value of the property. For example, the actual value of the property is the hex number for a color, but you want to show the name of the color in text.
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="mgr_opinion='#FF0000'">Red</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="mgr_opinion='#FFFF00'">Yellow</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="mgr_opinion='#00FF00'">Green</xsl:when>
</xsl:choose>

• Supporting European languages

To show the results in a European language:

1. Set the encoding attribute for the root xml tag:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>

2. Set the encoding attribute for the output tag:

<xsl:output encoding="iso-8859-1" method="html"
omit-xml-declaration="yes" standalone="yes" indent="yes" />