Text with Layout Rendering

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Text with Layout Rendering

Ed Zann

SSCrazy Eights

Points: 8694
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May 5, 2007 at 8:23 am

#178273

We have a legacy mainframe environment where reports are spooled out as ascii text, but it is text with layout. That is, titles are centered, columns aligned, etc. We use Monarch on these reports to parse out certain data for use in other processes, so, for instance, an account number in a particular report is found at line 3 positions 10 - 20.
I would like certain reports rendered from SSRS in a similar text format. None of the native rendering formats do this. It seems like such a simple basic function that I almost feel like I'm missing something here. An hour of Googling has not produced a solution, so I'm thinking that it is either incredibly difficult to do, or incredibly simple and I can't see it staring me in the face.
Is anyone aware of a 3rd parting rendering extension, or other approach that I could use to produce this type of output?

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Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004339 More actions · Answer 1

Not entirely clear on what you want to do... do you have data in SQL Server that you want to spool out in a similar fashion? In other words, where does the data for the new reports live?

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Ed Zann SSCrazy Eights Points: 8694 More actions · Answer 2

The vendor of our core mainframe system has provided daily snapshots of data in MSSQL. We want to use these snapshots to recreate some of the custom reporting currently done using the vendors legacy report writer.

We have other processes in place that use the legacy text based report files. It would be less disruptive if this output format could be maintained by the SSRS reports so that they would fit into the existing downstream processing.

xuthus SSC-Addicted Points: 403 More actions · Answer 3

I had a similar situation once, trying to create a text file that would match up to an existing Monarch template. I was using Crystal Reports to export the final text file, but the same method should apply. I basically created each line of the report as a single string, so that it looked like this:

@line1 = ''

@line2 = right(replicatestring(' ',40) & @field1,40) & right (replicationstring(' ',37) & @field2,37)

@line3 = ''

@line4 = right(replicatestring(' ',90) & @field3, 90)

etc...

If that's the sort of format (fixed width with different values per line) you're needing to recreate, I think using STUFF along with some variables will get you started. It's not elegant, but It worked for me.