Report Data Formats are used in Report Fields throughout the Report to apply data formatting options by applying functions, conversions and regular expressions.
Formats are declared globally in the Report and can also be defined in a shared Report RDL File.
To add or edit a Report Data Format click the menu Data | Report Formats or select the Data Formats (...) collection button from the Report property page.
Enter the details for the Report Data Format and configure the formatting options for the data outputs.
Select the best formatting option for the data output according to your requirements. Regular expressions and inbuilt functions can also be applied to manipulate, convert and extract data.
The Report Data Format will now be available from the drop-down for field formatting under Format Name.
If the Report Data Format is set as a default then the formatting options will be applied to all Report Data Fields.
Text Cleaners
Data Formatting Text Cleaners allows Text to be cleaned and formatted by applying a series of String Functions and Regular Expressions.
To add, edit and remove Text Cleaners to the Data Format click the Cleaners properties button to open the Text Cleaners collection editor.
Expand the String and RegEx nodes to configure the String Functions and Regular Expressions.
Drop-down list of predefined regular expressions to apply to the text cleaner.
Text Cleaner members can be moved up and down using the arrow buttons to control the order in which they are applied.
Report Data Formats exported using the Export Wizard can also be reused as a shared Resource File by setting the Formats File property to the URI of the exported or saved Report RDL.
Click the Formats File (...) property button to specify the URI File or URI Query for shared Report Data Formats.
Formats File
The Formats File represents a list of shared Report Data Formats exported or saved as Report RDL elements which can be reused and shared between other Reports.
File URI's
Report File URI's are expressed as Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) and can be either a Literal or a Query to specify the location of the File Resource. Literal values are constants that are determined by the URI File property.
Query based URI's are determined by the result of the URI Query which can be a series of XQuery or Python statements to specify the location of the File URI.
Report Rules are conditional XQuery or Python expressions that determine if Report content is enabled and applied to the build. Rule based queries return a Boolean that is either True or False and can query the Report Data Source and other Report Data Contexts. Rules are used for controlling the flow, visibility and activation of reporting content.
Report Rules if empty or null by default will always return True.
Report Namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes and is a mechanism to avoid name conflicts by differentiating elements or attributes within an XML document that may have identical names, but different definitions. If the Report Data Source contains namespaces they can be applied to the XQuery Processor.
