Format Definition - Derived

From the REPORT GENERATOR menu select Format Sationery > Derived (on the text file ring menu).

Derived fields are used in a similar way to derived fields in a report definition.

See also:

Field names

Although report definitions allow use of derived fields which do not have names, Format Stationery requires all derived fields to be named. The naming convention is as follows;

• Field names can be up to 8 characters
• Field names cannot start with a numeric character
• Field names must end with a dollar sign if the result of the derived field is not numeric

Long alpha derived fields

Some alpha fields need to hold a large number of characters. More than 32 characters require the field name to be structured as follows.

AAAA_##$

• The AAAA portion of the field name can be any normal alpha character, just as it can in any derived field name.
• All alpha derived field names must end in a dollar sign ($).
• The ## part of the name should be a number from 33 to 99 inclusive. This number will determine the length of the derived field.

On later releases of the software the format allowed is amended to:

AAA_###$ to enable alpha derived fields to have a length of up to 255 characters.

Derived fields from a report definition

The report definitions that drive the stationery format can have derived fields of its own, however these derived fields and values are not accessible to the standard user. More advanced users of the software can retrieve derived information from the report definition.

Standard Derived fields

Format Stationery provides some standard derived fields for everybody to use. They are as follows:

• Page number
• Line number
• Company name: The name displayed when you select a company when entering a module.
• Run date: Today's day number and, if used, should be put onto the format as a date field with an 8, 10 or 20-character image depending on the required date presentation.
• Run time: Print` s the time the report is run.

Note: The date field prints as a full text version of the date if 20 characters are used for the image. Remember, however, that if the date to be printed is within three months of today's date, and is within the same calendar year, then the year will not print. If a letter is written on the 23rd of July, the 4th of August would be printed without the year thus, '4th August', although if the letter was printed in January and the date 4th of August was being included, it would print thus, '4th August 2009', this time including the year because it is outside of the 3-month date range.