About reports

Meridian supports report definitions configured in Meridian Configurator or reports defined in third-party applications that use the Meridian Data Library as a data source. Meridian reports are configurable templates that users can select when building reports from the Meridian client applications. Report templates can also be used to automatically generate transmittal sheets that can be included in briefcases. These report templates define the properties in the report output, the format of the output, and optionally, the documents upon which the report is based. Most of a report’s configuration entails specifying the report’s format, which can be one of the following:

• Plain text file. The report data can be either unformatted or formatted using VBScript expressions.
• XML data with or without an XSLT stylesheet applied (produces an HTML file).
• Unformatted Microsoft Excel (up to 65535 records) or Microsoft Access (unlimited) data file.
• Microsoft Word (up to 1000 records) file formatted using a Microsoft Word template.

Note    Briefcase transmittal sheets can also be generated by an external reporting application as described in Linking to external applications.

In addition to which report template they choose, users can specify an alternate output format, the output location, the documents upon which the report is based, and optionally, to append report data to an existing report.

Creating and configuring reports in Meridian Configurator are described in the following topics.