Understanding cfreport and the ColdFusion Report Builder

Understanding <cfreport> and the ColdFusion Report Builder

<cfdocument> is designed to create printable versions of Web pages, free-form unstructured web pages. Of course, not all printable pages meet that description, and sometimes more structured output is needed, real reporting with features like:

• Banded reports

• Calculated totals and sums

• Repeating and non-repeating regions

• Embedded charts

• And more

<cfdocument> was covered in Chapter 18, "Printing."

While these reports can indeed be created manually, there is a better way, using the ColdFusion's <cfreport> tag and accompanying ColdFusion Report Builder.

It is important to understand that the Report Builder is just that, a builder, an application that allows you to create and manipulate .cfr files. The .cfr files themselves are processed (when requested) by a reporting engine built into ColdFusion itself. This high-performance multi-threaded engine processes .cfr files, executing queries if required, generating charts, laying out pages, performing aggregate calculations, and more, and finally generating complete reports (that may be viewed online or printed).

NOTE

ColdFusion Standard uses a single thread for reporting, whereas ColdFusion Enterprise allows the administrator to allocate as many threads as needed.

Reports created using the ColdFusion Report Builder may be generated in three formats:

• FlashPaper

• PDF

• Excel (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet)

Installing The Report Builder

Unlike ColdFusion itself (which need only be installed on computers processing ColdFusion code), the ColdFusion Report Builder must be installed on every computer on which reports will be designed.

If the ColdFusion Report Builder is not installed on your machine, run the installer named CFReportBuilder.exe (it can be found in /CFIDE/installers under the ColdFusion web root).

Running The Report Builder

The ColdFusion Report Builder is a standalone program used to define ColdFusion Report templates. It can be run standalone, and also directly from within Dreamweaver by double-clicking on a report file.

TIP

To launch the Report Builder select ColdFusion Report Builder from the Windows Program > Macromedia > ColdFusion MX 7 program group.

Configuring The Report Builder

When first run, the ColdFusion Report Builder launches a wizard that prompts for important initial settings. These include RDS connection information, and default settings.

TIP

You can rerun the setup wizard any time from the File, New menu.