Question for the masses

Posted At : June 25, 2007 11:42 AM
Related Categories: ColdFusion,MAX,Report Builder

At the upcomming MAX 2007 conference I will be giving the Hands On: Advanced ColdFusion Reporting session (no link yet, sorry). And I want to make it worth anyones while who attends. The text blurb on the MAX site says:
Reporting is one of the most important features in ColdFusion, and reporting capabilities have been significantly enhanced in ColdFusion 8. This session will reveal the considerable power behind these surprisingly easy-to-use features. Creating advanced and sophisticated printable output is possible, and we'll show you how.

As this is a hands on, we'll actually be doing stuff during the session. I have several idea's of what could be done, and it's marked as Advanced so I'm assuming you know CFML and have done at least some things with ColdFusion Reporting. No offense, but neophytes need not apply. Also, this session will be all about CFReport, not about CFDocument.

So among my ideas are doing a table of contents (ie using the BeforeExport function), using CFML to let you choose where to start exporting stuff for the label wizard, and so on and so forth. But I would like to know what real world problems need to be solved. And not just stuff that Ben tells me, but stuff that you guys actually need. So here's my question (and I'm probably opening a can of worms by asking it), what are the difficult problems that you guys are having when exporting reports. Not just bugs that you are running into (I want those too, but they can't be addressed in a session), but reporting problems that you have and are having issues solving. What are the tips and tricks that I need to teach in order to make the session worth your time.

Comment away my friends, comment away.

Also, I'll see everyone at CFUnited here in a few days as well :-)

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We upgraded from MX 7.02 to CF8. My "old" Reports worked fine, but now with CF8 when we export them to PDF, the left margin is different.
We beleve that there is a bug in the calculation of the left margin of a page.

We are using metric settings in the Report Builder.
The error can be reproduced with these steps:
-Created a new Report with Left Margin 2 cm and a single Field with the left Property = 1 cm (0.9879 cm). The printed paper with these poperties where fine. You could measure appoximatly 3cm . But if you use Report Left Margin = 1.27 cm and Field left Property = 0.35cm. The left margin of the printed paper is only 1.1cm.
So it depends on the choosen Values of report left margin and the left property of a field.
Does anybody else encounter the same problem?

# Posted By Thomas Iseli | 9/14/07 9:08 AM

Hi all,
I am looking for some inofrmation on cfreport and have what may be a very simple/stupid question. Here goes:
I am using the CFReport Builder to develop reports locally on my Windows system. I have no problems. However, when I upload my .cfr file to my Linux server I get nothing but gibberish and it appears it can't be read. Anyone know what I need to do to get this working on my Linux server?

Praying for a miracle,
Brad

# Posted By Brad | 10/2/07 3:09 PM

I'm kinda confused of how this thing works, can someone explain more or give links
that have more info about this...

_____
http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/shop_parts/shock...

# Posted By lara | 1/2/08 12:58 AM

Did you end up post the files from your conference

# Posted By AG | 2/25/08 11:32 PM

Could you please post the files?. I am trying to generate a report with Table of contents and hoping your examples will help

# Posted By S.T | 2/26/08 4:00 PM

Dean, we spoke about API access to the report template during the MX7 beta program but I never got chance to follow up on this. Is there any form of API access to the report templates? Especially given that they are now encrypted and no longer accessible XML. My main requirement is to be able to read the stored SQL query and the parameters configured within the report. It is to allow for automatic prompting and intial query data creation for a reporting system I sell. Currently I use Crystal Reports as the engine, but given that Crystal has now been taken over for the 3rd time (it's now a very very small cog in the faceless machine called SAP) I am keen to prepare alternatives, and CFReporting is the primary candidate if only I could access the template via an API.

Are there any options open to me here?

# Posted By Dave Boulden | 3/7/08 8:44 AM

Hi Dean. Not sure where else to post this, but I'm having a showstopper kind of problem. I am creating invoices that have N number of line items. Each line item can have N number of lines of description. The report displays all of the line items and then, on the bottom of the last page, should provide a signature block to sign. Here is my problem. If I put the signature block in the page footer, then it's printed on the bottom how I like, but repeated on every page. If I put the signature block in the report footer, than it prints on only the last page how I like, but immediately follows the line items instead of at the bottom. It needs to be at the bottom of the last page. Am I missing something? I posted the question out on CFTalk, and we couldn't figure it out. The closest I've gotten is to try and predict how many pages will be in the report, and then hide the page footer except on what I think will be the last page. This might ordinarily work, but the whitespace is still shown, so that's a non-starter.

Any help would be great. This is preventing me from launching a major product, so I am more than willing to pay for support to get this resolved! Thanks so much for any help.

# Posted By Mike | 7/20/08 6:38 PM

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