TAGINE, an interactive tool for report generation

Abstract

This paper describes an APL tool designed as an aid to report writing. Using APL formatting symbols is quite difficult, and the report formatting phase of a business application program is often very long: TAGINE has been designed to allow quick and easy programming of reports. TAGINE is divided into two modules: 1 - TANA is a simple macro-language intended for describing computations to be performed, and building a model of the final report (with automatic justifications, titles, formatting and decoration). 2 - TEDI performs the report generating using the model that has been stored. Most frequently, the end-user uses only the TEDI module. At the APL division of SLIGOS, we have been using TAGINE for one year and have reduced the report programming effort by a factor of 10 compared to direct use of formatting primitives. We have built 400 models with TANA, and produced 10000 tables with TEDI. Systematic use of TAGINE has greatly improved: • Applications portability • Linking of a variety of applications • Product maintenance and reliability