Using the Catalog of Available Fields Dialog

Use the Catalog of Available Fields dialog to select, and in some cases create, fields that you want printed on your report.

In the "Inserting Report Fields" subsection earlier in the current section, the Catalog of Available Fields dialog is described as the major tool you should use to paint fields on your report layout. That subsection describes dragging fields from the System sheet of the Catalog of Available Fields dialog straight onto your layout, including literals, pictures, lines, boxes, special fields (system fields such as date, time, userid, and so on), and database fields.

The Catalog of Available Fields dialog also enables you to create, add, and update parameter fields, script fields, summary fields, and method fields and to display the usage of database field items, parameter fields, script fields, summary fields, and method fields.

These functions are described in the following subsections.

To access the Catalog of Available Fields dialog, perform one of the following actions

The Catalog of Available Fields dialog is then displayed.

Individual field items in the Catalog of Available Fields, including report fields, parameters, summary fields, and script fields, have a graphical icon displayed to the left of the field to indicate the primitive type (for example, String, Binary, Decimal, and so forth) of the item. These display icons and their corresponding primitive types are listed in the following table.

Display Icon Primitive Type Description
Binary Container for arbitrary binary data
Boolean One of the logical truth values represented by true and false
Character A variable as a single ANSI or Unicode character
Date Represents a specific day since the start of the Julian period
Decimal A variable with a specific decimal currency and number format
Integer Represents the set of positive and negative whole numbers
Integer64 Represents the set of positive and negative whole numbers
Point Represents a point in two dimensional space
Real Represents a floating point number
String A variable as a sequence of characters
StringUtf8 A variable as a sequence of characters
Time A variable representing the time of day since midnight to the nearest millisecond
TimeStamp A variable representing the date and time since midnight to the nearest millisecond
TimeStampInterval A variable representing the time difference between two timestamp values
TimeStampOffset A variable representing a timestamp value but including the offset for the time zone

These icons are also used to display the type of fields elsewhere in the JADE Report Writer applications. For details about JADE primitive types, see the JADE Encyclopaedia of Primitive Types.

It is convenient to leave the dialog displayed while you develop your layout, as it provides all of the tools you require to complete the details of your report. However, you can move the dialog to a more convenient part of the screen, if required.

To move the Catalog of Available Fields dialog