Navigating a Multi-Page Report With the WebFOCUS Viewer

In this section:

How to:

Reference:

Normally, a web server returns an entire HTML report to a browser, which waits for all of the report before displaying it. On-demand paging, implemented in the WebFOCUS Viewer, returns one page of a report to a browser instead of the entire report. The web server holds the remaining pages until the user requests them. This feature shortens the time the user waits to see the first page and is especially useful for long reports. It also contains navigational features that enable you to move quickly among the pages of the report.

The WebFOCUS Viewer does not support the table of contents (BYTOC) option because the table of contents option requires all of the data to be on the same HTML page, even though it then filters and only exposes part of the page at a time. The WebFOCUS Viewer splits the output into many pages, only one of which is downloaded to the browser at a time. Accordion reports are also not supported with the WebFOCUS Viewer.

Note that you can use the HFREEZE StyleSheet option to display column titles on every page of output returned by the WebFOCUS Viewer.

The following is page 1 of a 31-page report displayed in the WebFOCUS Viewer.

Notice that the WebFOCUS Viewer is divided into two frames:

Reference: Usage Notes for HTMLARCHIVE With the WebFOCUS Viewer

WebFOCUS interactive reporting features must have a connection to the WebFOCUS client in order to access the components required to operate successfully.

HTMLARCHVE can be used to create self-contained HTML pages with user-defined images when client access is not available.

To generate HTML pages containing user-defined images that can operate interactively, use one of the following commands: 

SET HTMLEMBEDIMG=ON
SET HTMLARCHIVE=ON

Define BASEURL to point directly to the host machine where these files can be accessed using the following syntax: 

SET BASEURL=http://{hostname:portnumber}

For more information on SET BASEURL, see Specifying a Base URL.

Procedure: How to Navigate in the WebFOCUS Viewer

The WebFOCUS Viewer Control Panel offers several ways to view pages in your report:

  • To display the previous or the next page in sequence, click the Previous or Next arrow.
  • To display the first or last page of the report, click the First Page or the Last Page arrow.
  • To display a specific page:
    1. Enter a page number in the page input box.
    2. Click the Go to Page button.
  • To download the entire report as a single document, click the All Pages button. The WebFOCUS Viewer displays the entire report without the Viewer Control Panel.

    You can return to viewing a single page of your report by clicking the Back button on the browser toolbar.

  • To locate a text string, enter the text in the input box and click the Find button.

    To limit your search by case, toggle the A=a button.

    To control the direction of your search, toggle the -->/<-- button.

Using the WebFOCUS Viewer Search Option

The Viewer Control Panel contains controls that offer several ways to search your report. Using the Viewer search controls, you can select a string of information, such as a phrase that occurs in your report or a group of numbers, and search for each occurrence of that string. You can further customize your search by matching capitalization of words exactly (a case-sensitive search) or by controlling the direction of your search (either forward or backward from your starting point in the report).

When using the Search option:

  1. The first search starts at top of the document.
  2. The second and subsequent searches start from the last successfully found search string in the direction selected in the Viewer Control Panel. Note that the direction control is to the right of the Search entry field used to specify a search string.