Report Design Aid

• Develop a report layout on-line using a full screen editor.
• Print samples of the report.
• Generate an RPG or Cobol source member to be included in a program that prints the report.
• Generate DDS source specifications for a printer file for the report.
• Create an RDA report member from an existing RPG print program.
• Create an RDA report member from an existing DDS source specification for a printer file.
• Maintain report files which contain your report members (create, delete, copy, rename members).

If you know the most popular IBM editors, you can start working immediately with RDA as the commands of the RDA editor are almost identical with the SEU and SDA commands.

RDA/400 can extract field definitions from any external file (database, display, printer etc.). The commands are similar to SDA "Retrieve Data Base Fields" but in RDA you can extract either the field name or the alias name (useful for Cobol), or both.

How to Work with RDA

Simple. Look at the screen above. If you start a brand new report you enter the text lines (type H and D). Constants are entered in full, alphanumeric fields as a string of XXXs and numeric fields as a string of 999s (as you would expect).

Use the normal editing commands to move, copy or delete lines and shift text left/right etc.

Then print the report to see if it is what you want. When you are happy with the result, add the field names, edit codes, indicators, keywords etc. using the '&' lines below the lines to which they refer.

As soon as you add these lines, the WYSIWYG appearance of the report is no longer true. However RDA uses command key 14 which allows you to show or hide the '&' lines. When hidden, the report is again WYSIWYG.

If you start from an existing RPG program or printer file DDS, RDA creates the basic member for you and you can then modify it as required.

When you finish, you can generate and RPG, Cobol or DDS source member to use in the print program.

RLU was never like this!