Visual LANSA Forum

Is there any guidance or recommendations on how to present reports with VLF-ONE?

The 5250 application I am converting to VLF-ONE has about 10+ reports in it. These don't really fit the Filter/Command model. Some have criteria and some don't, they don't all display the same type or structure of data, etc.

So I am trying to figure out what may be the best way to handle this and am curious what others are doing.

I was thinking of a few different ways:

1. Create a Report Business Object and use the filter and instance list anyways. Each filter would collect the criteria and use the instance list to display the results. This only works if the result set has the same structure among all the reports, unless there is a way to manipulate columns in the list manager. Will likely require a custom instance list to handle paging, exporting etc.
2. Create a Report Business Object and use a hidden filter and custom instance list to present a list of possible reports. Each report would trigger a popup for criteria and results display. Will still have to deal with paging, exporting etc.
3. Create a command like the Dashboard with a button in the Main Toolbar. The command will display a list of possible reports. Each report would trigger a popup for criteria and results display. Will still have to deal with paging, exporting etc.

The first option seems like the ideal as it allows me to keep the consistency of the UI, if the columns can be managed dynamically.

How are other people presenting reports?

Are the reports PDFs or VL-Web lists?
VLF filters and instance lists are designed to work with a single 'business object' that has a relatively static definition.
You might investigate creating a single framework level command "Reports" that is fired up from the tool bar, akin to the shipped Dashboard example.
Then you have would have a single VLF command handler pane that is a blank palette for anything you want to do on it.

All VL, no PDFs (at least for now).

That is one of the options I was thinking off, so I'll start exploring that.

Thanks,
Joe