Special Edition Using Macromedia Studio 8

In this chapter

Rich Media Flash Forms 368

ColdFusion Report Builder 373

Reporting Formats 381

Creating Printable Web Pages 383

Troubleshooting 385

Best PracticesLimiting SQL Queries 386

Although developing database-driven web applications is great, it's likely that at some point you will want to do something with the data other than just display it on a web page. Whether it's understanding how many customers you have, how many orders you have processed, how many posts have been added to your forum, or a host of other data-related questions, you can often answer them by generating a report. Tools such as Crystal Reports and Active Reports generate nicely formatted reports complete with charts and graphs.

The difficulty, however, is creating dynamic reports that are easily incorporated into a web page. Luckily, Macromedia has addressed that point of pain in the new version of ColdFusion and has added a wealth of reporting capabilities to the application.