• The .name statement names the report.

• The .delimitedidentifier statement enables recognition of delimited identifiers for table, view, user, and column names in report specifications.

• The .setup/.cleanup statements perform data preparation and cleanup tasks (specified through query language statements). The .setup tasks occur before processing the query, whereas .cleanup tasks occur after processing the query, but just before exiting the report.

• The .shortremark statement allows you to provide a brief description about the report. This information is included in the Reports Catalog and the Save window in RBF.

• The .longremark and .endremarkstatements allow you to enter a large amount of descriptive text to describe the report specification. This text is displayed in the RBF Save window and on the Reports Catalog frame in RBF when you choose the MoreInfo operation.

• Comments can be placed in the text file of report specifications if preceded with /* and followed with */. Comments are ignored in report processing.

• The .output statement sets up an external file to receive the report output.

• The .data or .query statements define the data to be used by the report output.

• The .sort statement defines the sort order of the data for the report.

• The .break statement specifies the break columns for the report and the order in which to process occurrences of breaks.

• The .declare statement declares variables to be a given data type and allows definition of a prompt string or value string if required for that variable.

• The .include statement specifies the inclusion of Report-Writer code residing in different files, and is executed when you run the sreport command to store the report specification.

• The .cleanup statement performs initialization tasks, (specified through query language statements) just before exiting the report.