Getting Started Guide

Creating reports
Reports provide information found in the database in a useful way. In this they are
similar to queries. Reports are generated from the database’s tables or queries. They
can contain all of the fields of the table or query or just a selected group of fields.
Reports can be static or dynamic. Static reports contain the data in the selected fields
at the time the report was created. Dynamic reports can be updated to show the
latest data.
For example, a report on expenses for a vacation in the past should probably be a
static report because it is based upon specific data that does not change. However, a
report on the fuel data should probably be a dynamic report, because this report
depends upon data that does change.
Caution
Dynamic reports update only the data that is changed or added to a
table or query. They do not show any modifications made to the table or
query itself. For example, after creating the report below, open the fuel
economy query created in the previous section. For the "End-
Reading".”Odometer – Fuel.”Odometer” column, change the number 1 to
the number 3. The report will be identical before and after you make the
change.
All reports are based upon a single table or query. So you need first to decide what
fields you want to use in the report. If you want to use fields from different tables,
you must first combine these fields in a single query. Then you can create a report on
this query.
For example, a report on vacation expenses includes both fuel costs and meal costs.
These values are contained in fields of two different tables: Vacations and Fuel. So
this report requires creating a query.
Creating a static report
We will create a report on vacation expenses. Certain questions need to be asked
before creating the report.
• What information do we want in the report?
• How do we want the information arranged?
• What fields are required to provide this information?
• Will a query have to be created because these fields are in different tables?
• Are there any calculations required in the data before being added to the
report?
The expenses for our vacation are motel, tolls, miscellaneous, breakfast, lunch,
supper, snacks, and fuel. One possible report would simply list the totals of each of
these expense groups. Another possible report would list the expense totals for each
day of the vacation. A third possible report would list the totals for each expense
group for each type of payment. (This would let us know where the money came from
to pay the expenses.) The best way to create reports like these is to create the
queries needed to gather the needed data, insert the query data into a spreadsheet,
and use the necessary Calc functions on this data.
We will create two reports, one listing the expenses each day other than fuel and the
second listing the fuel costs each day.
Chapter 8 Getting Started with Base 245