Report Triggers

When you run a report, the report triggers are called in a specific order.

The following illustration describes the order of report triggers.

Order of report triggers

Report Triggers

When you initiate the report run, the OnInitReport Trigger is called. If the OnInitReport does not end the processing of the report, then the request page for the report is run, if it is defined. The page triggers for the request page are called. On the request page, you select the options that you want for this report. You can also decide to cancel the report run. If you decide to continue, then the OnPreReport Trigger is called. At this point, no data has yet been processed. When the OnPreReport trigger has been executed, the first data item is processed provided that the processing of the report was not ended in the OnPreReport trigger.

When the first data item has been processed, the next data item, if there is any, is processed in the same way. When there are no more data items, the OnPostReport Trigger is called to do any necessary post processing, for example, removing temporary files.

Important

If you define two functions that have the same name, one defined in a report and the other in a table that is referenced by the report, you cannot invoke the function defined in the report directly. By default, a call to the function invokes the function that is defined in the table. This behavior occurs when the function is called from a source expression or a trigger.

How a Data Item is Processed

Before the first record is retrieved, the OnPreDataItem Trigger is called, and after the last record has been processed, the OnPostDataItem Trigger is called.

Between these two triggers, the data item records are processed. Processing a record means executing the record triggers and outputting data. After a record is retrieved from the data item, the OnAfterGetRecord (Data Items) Trigger is called.

If there is an indented data item, then the records in this data item are processed.

When there are no more records to be processed in a data item, control returns to the point from which processing was initiated. For an indented data item, this means the next record of the data item on the next highest level. If the data item is already on the highest level, then control returns to the report.

See Also

Designing Reports