- 學位論文
一個報表產生的視覺化程式語言
A Visual Programming Language for Report Generation
摘要
報表是資料庫與網站系統中最常見也是最重要的應用之一，由於報表不見得由擅長程式設計的工程師所設計的，因此，許多研究和工具都希望能簡化報表產生的工作，讓報表設計者能自行產生報表，但這些簡化也限制了報表在排版(Layout)上的彈性，而且這些方法也無法提供所見即所得(What You See Is What You Get)的格式(Format)編輯器。 為解決上述問題，本論文提出一個視覺化程式語言：VisualTPL，並開發一個友善的視覺化開發環境：VisualTPS，報表設計師能在VisualTPS中，使用VisualTPL所提供的高階排版轉換元件，將資料庫的原始資料轉換成報表，除此之外，VisualTPS亦提供所見即所得的格式編輯器。 本論文並以實驗評估使用者對於VisualTPS的表現(Performance)與偏好(Preference)，實驗結果顯示，使用者對於VisualTPL與商業報表工具的表現是相似的，但使用者比較偏好VisualTPL，由於VisualTPL在報表排版上具有較高的彈性，當製作一般報表工具所不支援的報表時，VisualTPL是非常合適的選擇。此外，實驗結果也顯示使用者能快速地學會VisualTPS所提供的所見即所得格式編輯器，用來設計各種巢狀式表格的格式。
並列摘要
Report generation is arguably the most important task for database and web appli-cations. A report is usually designed by a report designer who is not necessarily a pro-grammer. Therefore, many researches and tools have been proposed to simplify report generation for report designers. However, these simplifications usually limit the kinds of report layouts that can be produced. Moreover, current methodologies do not support WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) format editor. To overcome the above problems, this dissertation proposes a visual programming language, called Visual Table Presentation Language (VisualTPL), for report generation. With VisualTPL, a report designer can use a set of high-level layout transformation components to convert the layout of source data to the layout of the target report. A vis-ual development environment for VisualTPL is developed, called VisualTPS. VisualTPS also provides a WYSIWYG format editor supporting a number of formatting rules de-signed specifically for nested reports. An evaluation has been conducted to understand end-users’ performance and pref-erences with VisualTPS. The results indicated that the participants have similar perfor-mances with VisualTPL and commercial tools, and the participants preferred VisualTPL. Since VisualTPL is more flexible than commercial tools, VisualTPL is a good choice when an end-user needs to create report layouts that are not supported by commercial report tools. In addition, the end-users can learn the WYSIWYG format editor quickly and use the editor to format nested report efficiently.