Articles

FastReport VCL is a report generation tool that has become an essential part of developers' arsenal on the Delphi platform over more than a quarter of a century. Since its inception in the late 1990s, the product has evolved from a simple template designer into a comprehensive system that supports interactive elements, vector graphics, and integration with modern IDEs. We decided to take a look back to demonstrate how reporting technologies have changed and to trace the key stages of the product's development in each version.

FP3 files are reports created with the popular report generation tool, FastReport. However, to open and view such files, a special program is required — FastReport Viewer.

FP3 is a format for ready-made reports generated using FastReport report generators, integrated into various business applications. A file in this format can be generated by different programs, such as CRM or ERP. To easily convert it to any preferred format, use the FastConverter .FP3.

Currently, XML and JSON formats have emerged as the primary standards for data storage and information exchange between computer systems. At the request of users, classes for handling XML and JSON have been added to FastScript. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how to work with these classes, explore their properties and methods, and also create reports from code using scripts.

FastReport isn’t just about report components—it has a lot more to offer! In particular, there are several components that you can use in your applications just like the other Delphi components, and we’re always adding more to the library. In this article, we’ll check out one of these: TfrShellTreeView.

RFID tags are a modern way to ID products, quickly replacing barcodes. What makes RFID tags different is they use radio signals. This lets you scan large quantities of items fast, saving a bunch of time. RFID tags are also used to identify employees within companies. In this article, we'll check out how RFID tags work with the new TfrxDeviceCommand object in FastReport VCL.

Starting from version 2023.2, the localization mechanism in FastReport VCL has been significantly improved — it is no longer necessary to recompile in order to translate FastReport into other languages.

We are considering new features of the report editor: extension lines, highlighting of intersecting objects, updated report and data trees.