Working with Templates
A report template specifies properties for use by one or more reports. A template gives you a way to define properties for a related set of reports and easily change those properties for all of those reports. A report can only inherit the properties from one template.
To design templates, you use the Template Designer. Templates look similiar to report definitions and using Template Designer is very similiar to using the Report Resource Designer.
When designing a report, you can specify a template from which the report can inherit properties such as field colors and fonts. Later, if you change the properties in the template, the changes take effect in every report using the template.
Using templates can help to:
• Reduce report development time
• Enforce common standards for report design
• Ease making changes to the common standards
In general, templates can specify three types of report properties:
• Top-level report properties (for example, paper size, margins)
• Section properties (for example, the back color of the PageHeader section)
• Field properties (for example, the font and ForeColor of fields)
In addition to inheriting properties, reports can also inherit fields from a template. For instance, a template might contain fields in the page header that display date, time, domain, and a corporate logo. These fields are automatically added to all reports using that template.
Elements in the report template represent classes or styles that can be applied to corresponding elements in a report definition based on a class-mapping relationship.
A field defined in the report template represents a field class identified by a unique class name. When the field class is applied to a field in a report definition, most of its properties are carried over to the field so that the field takes on the same formatting and layout.
The header, page header, page footer, or a group section defined in the report template represents a section class identified by a unique class name. When the section class is applied to a section in a report definition, it is virtually copied over to the report definition complete with all the elements in it.