Report Design Details

Make sure that every Master table has a corresponding Report irrespective of what the client specifies.

Make sure that every Transaction table has Reports based on some filtering criteria. Never allow a report of all transactions based on a "SELECT * FROM TTT" kind of query.

If the number of records in the report is expected to be very large, display the number of records in an intermediate form before the actual report.

Example Dialog:

"There are 44557 records to be shown. Do you want to continue with the report generation?"

Continue/Cancel/Show first N records. (N can be entered by user in a textbox).

The number could be calculated using a COUNT type query.

Examine for the possibility of additional reports other than the ones specified by the client. In this respect, the old software engineering adage that says - "give the client what the client needs and not just what the client wants" - may be useful.

Try to design useful MIS type of reports for the benefit (and "delight") of the client because the client may not know what is possible using your software. Here you can include summary reports, trend reports, forecasts, various graphs, etc.

All reports should be numbered. Details of the contents in the Report Header, Page Header, Detail, Page Footer, Report Footer should be explicitly stated. The format is as follows:

Report Header

This section contains details about the contents of the report header. This only comes on the front page of the report. Normally heading of the report is kept in this section.

Contents of this section are repeated in all the pages.

Actual content of the report goes in this section

Page Footer

Contents of this section are repeated in all the pages. Page numbering is normally put in this section. Format for the page numbering is as follows:

Page [Current page number]/[Total number of pages] and center justified.

Report Footer

This only comes on the last page of the report.

For example:

[Page Header]

Date