REPORT OUTPUT AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS

A. F. FERGUSON & CO.

CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS

A member firm of
 REPORT OUTPUT AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS

Contents

Preface..............................................................................................................................................................2
1. Report Output Standards..............................................................................................................................3
1.1 General Report Standards......................................................................................3
1.2 Text Standards.......................................................................................................3
1.3 Report Title Standards...........................................................................................4
1.4 Page Headers.........................................................................................................5
1.5 Label Standards.....................................................................................................5
1.6 Column Heading Standards...................................................................................5
1.7 Column Ordering...................................................................................................5
1.8 Formatting Numbers..............................................................................................5
1.9 Monetary Amounts................................................................................................6
1.10 Non-Monetary Amounts......................................................................................6
1.11 Totals...................................................................................................................6
1.12 Page Footers.........................................................................................................6
2. Development Standards................................................................................................................................7
2.1 General Development Standards...........................................................................7
2.2 Naming Conventions.............................................................................................7
2.3 Optimization Standards.........................................................................................8

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 REPORT OUTPUT AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS

Preface
This is a document of reporting outputs and development standards to the A.F. Ferguson
report development of the Oracle E-Business suite 11i (Version 11.5.10.2) for the
Dawlance Group. The intended audience of this manual is the Oracle Applications
System Administrator, Oracle Applications DBA and the developer’s who would be
developing and integrating custom forms and reports with Oracle Applications.

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 REPORT OUTPUT AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS

1. Report Output Standards

Every report designed by AFF is to help the productivity of client. Each report is designed by AFF in a
way to provide all the information client needs for a specific task.
Good report cosmetic standards are followed by AFF to ensure reports are accurate or thorough. They do
improve a report’s legibility and ease of use.
AFF follows the following reporting standards to ensure consistency among reports that helps a client
understand a particular report:

1.1 General Report Standards

Fields Related to Report’s Business Purpose
AFF makes report easier to read and use by eliminating unnecessary fields that do not relate to client
report’s business purpose.

Minimum Number of Fields in a Report

The more fields a report displays, the more difficult it is to read and use effectively for client’s purpose.

Separate Reports to Satisfy Each Business Purpose

AFF does try to make a single report to serve each business purpose, if otherwise, it is almost certain to
write a cumbersome report containing too many field.

1.2 Text Standards

Case Standards
Mixed case reports are easier to read than all capitals and are consistent with the standard Oracle
Applications reports and forms. AFF uses mixed case in client reports. Capitals are only used for generally
accepted industry acronyms (such as LIFO).

Abbreviation Standards
Abbreviations are hard to read and understand. AFF tries to avoid abbreviations. When it is hard to avoid
abbreviations, AFF uses the same abbreviation for that term throughout the reports system.

Field Labels across Reports and Forms

AFF ensures that a particular field has an identical label on each report in which it appears. Use of the
same label in each report that shows a field, client can easily decide whether two reports show comparable
or similar pieces of information.
AFF also uses matching terminology or field labels between reports and forms. This helps client
understand whether the data they enter in a form prints in a particular report and where to enter that data. If
room is available, an additional descriptive text is added to the report label according to the requirement of
client.

Alphanumeric Values
AFF always left aligns alphanumeric values in report columns.

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 REPORT OUTPUT AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS

Numeric Values
AFF always right aligns numeric values in report columns.

Consistent Field Widths across Reports

AFF ensures that a field appears on several reports; it has the same width on each such report.
Exception: Client does not always need to print the entire width of long names, descriptions, or comment
fields (which can be up to 240 characters). If the business purpose for a particular report does not require
printing long field in full and client can nevertheless benefit from a shortened field, then AFF truncates the
field rather than omitting it.

Ranges Expression Standards (Using From: To: Format)

AFF shows a starting point and an ending point, for example a start date and an end date by using the
following format with stacked left labels:
Range Name From:
To :
Example:
Vendor Numbers From: 0
To : 99999
If ranges are expressed in a report subtitle, AFF uses the following format:
Vendor Numbers from 0 to 99999

Consistent Font Style across Reports

AFF uses Arial Font Style across the reports.
Font Size for report
 Title is
12 Bold;
 Sub
Titles/Labels is 10 Bold;
 Column
Headings is 08 Bold;
 Detail is
08;
 Total is
08 Bold.
For some reports font could go 2 size up or down for all of the above depending upon the report
requirements.

1.3 Report Title Standards

Title a Report Based Upon its Primary Purpose
AFF Briefly states a report’s primary purpose in its title and avoids unnecessary words.
Example:
Right: Prepayments Status Report

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 REPORT OUTPUT AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS

Wrong: The Status of Customer Prepayments Report

Font Style: Arial, 12 Size, Bold.

1.4 Page Headers

AFF applies following standards to the repeated headings at the top of each page:
 Shows
company, report names in a page header;
 Identifie
s an organization or product source in a page header;
 Includes
the report title and subtitle in a page header;
 Skips
two blank lines after report titles;
 Skips
two blank lines after a page header before column headings;
 Labels a
confidential report below the title and subtitle;
 Shows
other important report parameters in a page header.

1.5 Label Standards

AFF applies following standards to report labels:
 Label a field using its form field prompt;
 Spanning headers to fit long top labels;
 Maximum 30 characters for label length;
 Font Style: Arial, 10 Size, Bold.

1.6 Column Heading Standards

AFF applies following standards to column headings:
 Centrally align alphanumeric and numeric top labels;
 Label a field using its form field prompt;
 Minimum of 30 characters for wrapped text columns;
 Font Style: Arial, 08 Size, Bold.

1.7 Column Ordering

AFF applies following standards to the order in which columns are arranged on a report:
 Orders columns logically and consistently across reports;
 Puts client’s key columns on the left side of a report;
 Puts most important columns at the far left or far right of a report.

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1.8 Formatting Numbers

AFF applies the following standards to numeric values:
 Aligns decimal numbers at the decimal point;
 Prints negative numbers using a bracket sign;
 Precision up to two decimal places is used;
 Uses “,” as thousand separators.

1.9 Monetary Amounts

AFF applies the following standards to numbers that represent monetary amounts:
 Does not show currency symbols in a report.

1.10 Non-Monetary Amounts

AFF applies the following standards to numbers that represent amounts that are not monetary:
 Indicates the unit of measure for each amount unless it is obvious;

1.11 Totals
AFF applies the following standards to compute totals:
 Uses a descriptive left label to preface a column total;
 Distinguishes between a subtotal left label and a total left label;
 Indicates and distinguishes between a subtotal and a total;
 Font Style: Arial, 08 Size, Bold.

1.12 Page Footers

AFF applies the following standards to the repeated footers at the bottom of each page:
 Includes page number in the lower right corner of page footer (format: Page 1 of n);
 Provides a page footer legend if report contains symbols or abbreviations;
 Includes
a date/time stamp in the bottom left corner of a page footer;
 Uses
DD-MON-YYYY HH:MM AM/PM Date/Time stamp format.

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2. Development Standards
Development standards are made to ensure a legible and easily understandable work done to fulfill client’s
requirements.
AFF follows the following development standards to ensure consistency through out the customizations
that helps AFF developer and/or client to understand the customization work.

2.1 General Development Standards

AFF uses SQL Queries/Procedures/Functions/Formula columns in reports identification labels within the
source as described below:
Program ID:
Description:
Creation Date:
Created By:
Modification Log
User Date Request Form# Description
These labels describe Procedure/Function’s creation history, its purpose, and modification made time to
time by the developers.
Columns do not have meaningful name are assigned meaning full alias.
Account code’s segments separators are picked from where they are defined for application forms to keep
consistency in the reporting system with application forms.
Proper comments are added to complex logic.
Fields defined in rdf are named properly where necessary.
Hard coding must be avoided, if unavoidable, the justification and explanation will be added to the
Description specification of function/procedure or formula column creation log. In case of multiple
occurrence of the same hard coded literal, it will be defined as a constant field and that constant field will
be used in the code.

2.2 Naming Conventions

Reports Naming Conventions
AFF uses “DAW-REPORT” as a postfix in the report names. This always helps AFF developers as well
as client to identify the customized reports developed for client.

Customized Programs Naming Conventions

AFF uses “DAW-PROGRAM” as a postfix in the program names. This always helps AFF developers as
well as client to identify the customized programs developed for client.

Procedures/Functions Naming Conventions

AFF uses “DAW_” as a prefix in the procedures/functions names. This helps AFF developers as well as
client to identify the customized procedures/functions developed for client.

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Report RDF Naming Conventions

AFF uses application module abbreviation and prominent part of report name for example Journal Voucher
Print report the RDF name would be GL_JV or GL_JOURNAL_VOUCHER. AFF keeps all customized
RDF(s) in separate TOP (DAW_TOP). For text RDF(s) “_TXT” will be used as post fix e.g. for text base
RDF of GL_JV it would be GL_JV_TXT.

Alias Naming Conventions

AFF uses starting letters combination for examples alias “GJH” is used for GL_JE_HEADERS table in
queries built for customized reporting.

Index Naming Conventions

AFF uses “DAW_<table name>_Nnn” as index name where nn ranges from 01 to 99.

Parameters Naming Conventions

AFF uses “P_” as prefix of parameter names.

Formula and Summary Column Naming Convention

AFF uses “CF_” for formula columns and “CS_” for summary columns as prefix.

Value Sets Naming Convention

AFF uses “DAW_<Module Name>_REP” for report value sets and “DAW_<Module Name>_SYS” for
system value sets as prefix.

2.3 Optimization Standards

AFF developers always follow the following strategy to get the best performance out of the system.
AFF applies the following standards to optimize its SQL base development:

AFF considers each possible query in turn

AFF considers each possible query while customizing routines for clients.

AFF evaluates each execution plan to measure performance

AFF evaluates each execution plan to measure performance of complex queries considering system
resources (CPU, I/O. memory and database architecture etc), data distribution etc.

AFF reserves the fastest plan for the client

AFF reserves the fastest plan for the client after performance measures to provide the best out of all
possibilities (based on optimizing complex queries). AFF avoids Sort operations that are not necessary.
AFF Optimizes memory sort and disk overhead by ensuring that sort operations are always done in
memory instead of Disk Space.

AFF uses NL-Join (indexed inner whenever possible)

AFF uses inline views and top-n analysis techniques to make sure the high performance of the customized
programs. AFF always uses Oracle Proprietary Joins instead of SQL Compliant joins (ANSII Standards) as
compliant joins does not offer any performance benefits.

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AFF Orders relation from smallest to biggest

AFF orders table relations from smallest to biggest so that the smallest record set is selected in the very
first step which plays an important role in customized routines performance.

AFF avoids Cartesian products

AFF avoids Cartesian product of tables; instead AFF selects the only columns and rows necessary and
required for the results, to achieve this AFF properly joins the tables.

AFF applies best techniques over sorting, joining & grouping operations
Sorts, joins and grouping are expensive and important operations in object relational database management
systems. AFF always uses properly indexed columns to enhance the search criterions in customized
programs. AFF defines indexes on varchar2 data type based columns to optimize the joins and group
operations where required.

AFF uses "pushed down" selections and projections

AFF uses “pushed down” selections to the data to speed up processing to limit the amount of
data that is returned from the database. AFF uses optimized record selecting formula to do so.

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