Document flow plays an important role in building a corporate system. The fp3 format is the main document of the finished report if you use FastReport VCL in your system. To facilitate the generation of documents of different types from the internal format without rebuilding the reports, we have exp...

About three years ago, we added a new special component called Transports. They enable to save built reports to the cloud, as well as use files in the cloud (for example, pictures) to build reports. Until now, there were 4 cloud transports: Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, and 2 non-cloud tran...

Sometimes you may need to restrict the users' ability to edit and copy reports. The key is to do it so that they would not even guess that the program uses such a wonderful product as FastReport. Let's talk about how to keep report templates hidden from prying eyes. The idea is pretty simple: to sto...

CODE 128 is the barcode developed by Computer Identics Corporation (U.S.A.) in 1981. CODE 128 can represent all 128 ASCII code characters (numbers, upper case/lower case letters, symbols and control codes). Since it can represent all characters (except Japanese kanji, hiragana and katakana) that can...

In this article I would like to tell you about such a powerful opportunity of FastReport as multilevel reports. Their structure can be compared to a tree – a trunk, large branches, thinner branches growing from them, and so on up to leaves – or with a company structure: divisions, subdiv...

Beginning from the first release of FastReport VCL 6 there is an ability to set connections for Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive through special components – “Transports”. To improve the experience of internet transports using starts from FastReport VCL 2021.3 we have reworked ...

One of the key tasks of a report generator is data retrieval. Most often, databases are used to store and retrieve data. But what if it is remote cloud storage, which is used to store certain data? How to upload a company logo via http to a report to ensure that it is always up-to-date? To solve th...

First of all, FastReport VCL is a report generator. Based on this conclusion, we can assume that previewing or embedding documents of other formats into a report is excessive. But according to requests from our customers, we can see the opposite point of view. Many of our customers are solving tasks...

A new ITF-14 barcode has been added in FastReport VCL 2021.2. Let me remind you that ITF-14 (Interleaved Two of Five) is a two-band numeric code, or a high-density code that can encode an even number of digits only. Each such barcode encodes an odd digit with a bar and an even digit with a space bet...

In our previous articles within the “Akademik” educational program, we have learned to install FastReport in Lazarus, mastered working with diagrams, charts, and bar codes, and connected a report to the data. Now we shall consider dialog forms. Often, one needs to set certain parameters...

This is the final article of the courses of Akademik educational program. In the previous publications, we considered building reports with dialog boxes and connecting a report to the Fast Report data. The Map Object is used to display two-dimensional graphic maps in ESRI shapefile (.shp), Open Str...

We continue to publish support articles for students as part of the Academy's educational programme. Every developer at some point will need to work with business graphics: diagrams, charts, barcodes. And our FastReport VCL will help them do it! Creation of charts and graphs To draw a diagram the ...

In the previous article about working with charts and graphs, we were already familiar with business graphics and barcodes. Now it is time to complicate the task and work with different data sources. Most reports are typically based on data from databases. To access this data Lazarus provides powerf...

As part of the Academic's educational programme, we have decided to produce some support articles for students. If you are making business or government software that needs to be cross-platform or just run on Linux systems or native operating systems (which are also Linux), you will eventually need...

"Drill Down" or "deepening into data" is a concept with many sides, which can refer to actions in tables or in something else that encapsulates information. And plain and simple, it's a drop-down list! One of the most important operations is Drill-Down, for example, in OLAP with cubes, and, in prin...

How to make a mush of data into an informative report? Oracle DB, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, FireBird are probably the most popular, but by no means all, of the many DBMSs in which data can be created, populated, modified and managed. Often they are filled with this very data for...

Until recently, the task of generating reports through the Web from an application written in Lazarus was, let’s say, very creative. Today we are pleased to announce the release of client-server components for Lazarus in beta testing. They can be used to create and customise a server for remot...

What is a ZPL file? ZPL stands for Zebra Programming Language. It allows team to create the desired print design for any label or page. This makes the label independent from the specific printing device. The printer receives commands to produce shapes, frames, symbols and other things, and itsel...

A bit of theory about barcodes It is difficult to imagine our life without barcodes, especially now that we meet them at every step. We go to the cinema and our tickets contain this “black and white drawing of bars”, we go to the supermarket and each product has information about it in ...

CODE 39 is the barcode developed by Intermec Corporation in 1975. Up to 43 characters including numbers, letters and some symbols can be included in the barcode: 0123456789 ABCDEFG HIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZ-.$/+%. Since letters can be handled, CODE 39 is indispensable in the industrial fields and used in...