Viewing the report

When all required parameters have values, clicking Run Report opens the Report Viewer window. The Report Builder creates a command line to pass the user-defined parameters, in the order defined by interface specification. For example, if a report procedure asks for parameters LOOKIN LABEL, the Report Viewer passes these values as follows:

ccperl elements_with_label.prl 

The Report Viewer creates a process to run the report procedure using ccperl.exe for .prl, perl for .pl, cscript.exe for .js and .vbs, and default activation for .exe. The report procedure returns results to STDOUT. The results are separated by semicolons, in the same order, number, and type specified in the fields definition in the interface specification.

When the report procedure has collected all its data, it exits. The report procedure must return records to STDOUT in the most efficient manner possible; the Report Viewer sorts the results and formats them for display. At run time, users can change the default sorting order by clicking the column headings in the Report Viewer. Simple text sorting is used for all fields except those whose field_type is time_t, integer, or cctime. For these three fields only, Report Viewer uses numeric sorting.