You can produce charts and display them as graphs. Producing a chart, instead of a printed or displayed report, differs only in the way it is formatted. The Format tab for charts is different to the one used for other reports. After completion the chart looks like a spreadsheet and can be used as an on-screen graph provided there are not too many elements.
Note: More information about the formatting of graphs can be seen in the topic Graph Control in the System Utilities on-line help.
What do you want to do?
Set the output type on the Title tab to 'C' for chart.
The Format tab only requires the input of three elements; Row
information, Column information and Value information. The first two of these must be character fields while the third has to be numeric. Note: There can be a maximum of 20 columns, with one column for overflow and one for totals. A maximum of 50 rows, with one row for overflow and one for totals. This is mainly to allow the chart to display properly in limited space. More complicated charts should be produced on a spreadsheet application designed for the purpose. You must provide two axis points and a value in order to produce a graph because these three values are initially there to produce a two-dimensional chart, the graph is a by-product of the chart.
Most common problems are solved by: Note: When the system prepares the graph it will automatically use the
numeric value to populate the vertical axis, however it will offer
you both of the character fields for possible use on the horizontal
axis. Select whichever seems most appropriate and click the OK button.Settings on the Report Generator Form
Generating a Chart
To generate a chart report
Autoline scans the database and sorts the information required into the right order for the chart display.
Note: You may present each of the rows in turn or may elect to display the totals.
Summarise by: Enter the field name, if it is known, in the same way as you would enter a derived field name or a field name in the Select tab. A field called CATEGORY from table number one would be entered as !1_CATEGORY. This field must be character.
Row labels (blank for above): Enter the label for the row on the chart. Leave the field blank for the row label to be defaulted as the Summarise by: field.
Row axis title: Enter the row axis title.
Fill from table: Completion of this field will produce a row for every possible code that could be used. See Fill from table.
Summarise by: Enter the field name, if it is known, in the same way as you would enter a derived field name or a field name in the Select tab. A field called AREA from table number one would be entered as !1_AREA. This field must be character.
Column labels (blank for above): Enter the label for the row on the chart. Leave the field blank for the column label to be defaulted as the Summarise by: field.
Column axis title: Enter the column axis title.
Fill from table: Completion of this field will produce a column for every possible code that could be used. See Fill from table.
Fill from table: To explain this we will assume that we are going to produce a chart of units sold by each sales person during a week. There are seven sales executives and each must be represented on the chart.
The report will use two tables. The prime table is the New Vehicle Stock Books table, and the second table is the Sales Executives table.
Each of the Sales Executives exist as entries within the Sales Exec. table. This table enables us to put a name together with the Sales Exec. code we are used to seeing on the system.
Let us assume that if the chart is produced on Tuesday, only three of the Sales Executives have actually made a sale during that week. If the chart is produced now it will only show those three people on the chart.
The fill-using attribute enables us to get the Report Generator to look at table number 2 (the Sales Exec table), and produce a column on the report for each Sales Executive whether they sold anything or not, purely because they exist in the Sales Exec table.
The chart will show four of the columns with zero values, but it will be complete.
If we go back to the example we are using for the on-line help, we are analysing the outstanding debt by Area code.
In the Tables tab there should be three tables; Table number one is the SL.accts table, table two is the SL.areas table and table three is the SL.ctgry table. These are Accounts, Area codes and Category codes respectively.
The row is being defined as Area code. If you need to represent every area code, whether it has a collective balance or not, you need to enter '2' to represent table number two. This is a signal to the system to search through the Areas table and include all areas on the chart. If, however, you we only want to include Areas which have an outstanding balance then you must enter 'N' for No.0
This completes the input for the Row information. The Column information is entered in a similar fashion although, in this example, the title is different and the fill using would need to show '3' to pre-fill the chart with all known Category codes.
Tip: Select the
drop down select facility, adjacent to the Fill from table field, to view / select from all available options.
Display value: Enter the Display value. This is the only numeric table named on the tab. It could be a value from the prime table or it may be a derived field.
Display image: Once the Display value field is named the image should be agreed. As charts tend to deal with Totals rather than individual amounts, decimal places on amounts are not always meaningful. If they are not included it will save a considerable amount of column space. Remember that the chart will display on the screen, which has limited space, therefore the smaller the image the better, if there are liable to be a lot of columns.
In some cases it may be necessary to divide the number by 100 or 1,000 in derived fields in order to make the chart display.
In this case an image of ### would display an amount up to 999, while an image of -######.## would allow a number of +-999999.99.
Show zeroes: The Show zeroes check box will decide whether zero values are to be displayed as a zero or as blank spaces.
Once this tab is defined, you should complete, compile and save the rest of the report in the usual way.