Creating Report Queries

Print files of Lawson reports can be data sources for OLE DB Object Services. One typical use of this feature would be to feed a standard Lawson report into Crystal Reports so that it could be formatted in Crystal or some other report creation tool.

To create a report query

  1. Log in to Query Builder.
  2. Select Report from the Select Command menu to set the command type to report queries.
  3. In the left pane of the Query Builder, expand Reports and then expand either MyReports or Users, depending on whether you want to use reports you have run or ones other users have run. (To see other users reports, the Show All Users global property must be set to True.)
  4. Expand the report you want to use and then double-click the .prt file you want the query to go against.
  5. Optional. Make selections for specialized query options from the Tools menu.
    1. Right-click in the Properties view for the query and select Command Properties.
    2. Expand the command properties, either for all report queries or for the active query.
    3. Right-click on a command property and select Edit Property Value. The following command properties are available for report queries.
      Option name Selection
      All Strings Controls whether all retrieved data is treated as strings.
      Drill Format

      You can specify format options for drill output. Your choice is based on requirements of the consumer that will use the query.

      Default: None. The output will be the same as a Drill Query. If you are handling formatting separately, choose None. For Enterprise Reporting 1.5 or higher, or for Reporting Services, you must select None.

      OleDB Compatible Format: Drill data contains formatting specific to OLE DB Connector.
      PageSize Sets the number of records to receive at one time for the current query.
    4. When you finish editing the command properties, click OK to close the User Preferences window.
  6. Click Execute to test the query.

    If the query has problems and the problems are not obvious, you might want to set Execution Logging to Server Calls to Log File. See Execution Logging for more information.

  7. When the query works correctly, save the query.
  8. To make the query available to your VB or other application, select the text of the query and then select Copy from the Edit menu to place your query on the Windows clipboard.