Abstract
Report generation is one of the most important tasks for database and e-commerce applications. Current report tools typically provide a set of predefined components that are used to specify report layout and format. However, available layout options are limited, and WYSIWYG formatting is not allowed. This paper proposes a four-phase report generation process to overcome these problems. The first phase retrieves source tables from the database. The second phase reorganizes the layout of the source tables by transferring the source tables into a set of new flat tables (in the first normal form). The third phase restructures the flat tables into a nested table (report) by specifying the report structure. The last phase formats the report with a WYSIWYG format editor supporting a number of formatting rules designed specifically for nested reports. Each phase of the proposed process supports visual programming, giving an easy-to-use user interface and allowing very flexible report layouts and formats. A visual end-user-programming tool, called TPS, is developed to demonstrate the proposed process and show that reports with sophisticated layouts can be created without writing low-level report generation programs.
