Data Formats

In business world, data carries a business value associated to name, percent, month, year, profit, etc. Below are the formats used to commonly represent data:

• Title case for cities:New Delhi

• Percent symbol: 56%

• Year represented in 4 digits:2024

• Date in United States of America: 12/27/24 (MM/dd/yy)

• Date in India: 27/12/24 (dd/MM/yy)

• Currency symbol:$ 99

Format is applied to a field during report generation. Format properties for a field is stored in the form of format codes (also known as format string).

Use this dialog box to apply preset format to a field. Selected format will be converted in format code and displayed in Format text box (on Analytical Object page).

Preset data formats

Application offers a number of preset formats to choose from. When you specify a format, a sample and the format code it applies is displayed on the dialog.

Apply Locale Default: While specifying output format of a Number, Currency, Date and Time type field, check this checkbox to format the output based on the default format as per Locale active at report generation time. Leave the checkbox unchecked to set format that should be applied on the output.

Note: Default format to be used for a locale is automatically set by the application. However, this can be customized by specifying in localeconfigurations.xls located on Report Server.

General

Select this option when data is not expected in any specific format preferences. When applied as output format, report will be generated using data in the format it is received from database. When applied as input format, user may enter value in any format.

Number

The following pre-set format properties are available for numbers:

• Decimal Places: The number of digits on the right side of decimal point. For example, if you select 2, the number 12 will be displayed as 12.00 and the number 12.345 will be displayed as 12.34

• Use 1000 Separator: Check this checkbox to insert a comma after every thousand. For example 1,000,000

• Negative Numbers: Negative number can be enclosed in brackets, e.g. (874.98) or it can have a dash (negative sign) on the right, e.g. -874.98

 Currency

If the numeric data is “currency” like sales or salary or profit, you may select a currency symbol from Currency dropdown. This is in addition to the preset properties available for Number format.

When you select a format, dialog displays a sample value and the format code that it will auto-generate for the field.

Date

Application offers a number of preset date formats to choose from. Select a format to view a sample of date in selected format. To know more about date and time format codes, refer to “Data and Time Format Codes”.

Time

A number of pre-set time formats are available to select from. Select a format to view a sample of how time will appear in selected format. To know more about date and time format codes, refer to “Data and Time Format Codes”.

Percentage

To denote a number as percentage, select this format. You can further choose the Decimal Places in a number after which the percentage symbol (%) be displayed

Decimal places: The number of digits on the right side of decimal point.

Scientific

Select this format to represent a value in scientific notation (also known as exponential notation). In computer applications, exponential part of the number is separated by E. For example, 123.456 in scientific format will be 1.23456 E+2.

Text
This is mostly used as output format.  Select from (None), Upper Case and Lower case. Text value will be converted accordingly at the time of report generation.