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...
VCL
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 ta...
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 ...
With a great variety of document formats, often can be a situation when the customer wants to use some kind of document formats they already have and don't waste time on creating the same layout in the report. For those cases, FastReport VCL provides the ability to use RichText or HTML tags ...
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 paramet...
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 ...
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...
This article is outdated. Updated information is available at the following link. 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 s...
"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...
During the summer we held a contest for the best demo addon, application or report for FastReport VCL 6. We selected two winners whose projects complied with all the rules. They received their prizes and took a minute to tell us about themselves and their projects. First winning project: custom DB...
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 it...
Someone might not know, but the PDF standard allows you to create fillable forms. That is, the finished document can be edited directly from the viewer. This is most often used for questionnaires and various forms. The user fills in the fields and sends the document by email or prints it. Today we ...
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...
On the Data protection day, we decided to prepare an article about the PDF documents protection. PDF has become one of the world standards today; it’s a good idea to understand how to protect it. From what do you need to protect a PDF document? From unauthorized editing. From unauthoriz...
I would like to note that FastReport VCL is one of the most convenient components for generating reports of any complexity. After all, here we can use not only different types of DBMS, but also Swiss barcodes, maps, tables, graphs and many other objects. Quite often we are asked “how to create...