In this Section
RAD Solutions: E.A.R.L. (EFACS ADVANCED REPORTING LANGUAGE)
E.A.R.L. is an advanced reporting tool designed specifically for the EFACS Enterprise ERP solution Language. For day-to-day reporting requirements, EFACS Enterprise provides many standard reports for viewing information such as outstanding works orders, work-to lists, purchasing requirements, invoices, statements, credit notes and much more.
For easy re-formatting of these reports and writing additional ones, EFACS Enterprise provides E.A.R.L., an XML based, platform independent reporting language as part of the Customisation Toolkit which offers all the same version and administrative control benefits inherent within the toolkit itself.
Reports can be viewed on the screen in HTML format giving the user the report in an easy to use Web page layout. For printed versions of reports EARL generates a PDF document and uses Adobe Acrobat to preview and print the report.
The HTML output offers full drill-down facilities on the information in the report, i.e. click on a part number in a report to view further information about the part in question.
Fully customisable pop-up windows display supplementary information, for example, an Information Panel icon may be displayed next to a customer code. Clicking on the icon will display data about that customer’s balance, credit limit, etc.
Technology
The XML script based language of E.A.R.L. delivers unrivalled power to a technical user when modifying a standard report or creating a new reporting definition from the ground up. XML is used throughout EFACS Enteprrise. It is a fundamental building block and is used for much more than e-commerce and communicating with third party packages. The emphasis on XML gives EFACS an Internet structure - from the top to the bottom.
XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language, and was designed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to make it easier to interchange structured documents over the Internet.
Structured documents are documents that contain content, including words and pictures, together with explanations as to what role each piece of content plays. XML files clearly indicate where the start and end of each logical part of a given document occurs.
Key Capabilities
- HTML or PDF view options with XLS export capability.
- Reports are fully integrated into EFACS Enterprise, capable of combining data from multiple sources and able to run directly from the EFACS Enterprise menu system,
- Reports are fully integrated into the Document Management functionality of EFACS Enterprise.
- Reports and lists of data can be grouped to organise related data together.
- High degree of flexibility and control over how data is presented and formatted.
- Interactive drill through reports and customisable pop-ups to provide immediate detailed information.
