Creating Basic Reports

In this topic, you create elementary reports using basic building blocks common to even the most complex report requests. You learn to use:

• The TABLE FILE command. TABLE starts the reporting request. FILE identifies the data source to use in reports.
• The PRINT, LIST, SUM, and COUNT display commands to specify how to process data in a report, individually or grouped.
• Field names to identify the data to retrieve from a data source.
• The AS keyword to change column titles that are automatically provided.
• The END command to complete a report request and break the connection to the data source you named in the TABLE command. To write another request, you start with the TABLE command.
• Any text editor, to create and change files called FOCEXECs. A FOCEXEC is a set of commands, in this case, reporting commands, that you can save and execute at any time. You can also edit FOCEXECs.