12. Report-Writer Statements : Report Setup Statements : .Data Statement—Specify Table for Report : Description
 
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Description
Note:  The .data statement identifies a table or view in the database that is used in its entirety in the report. The four statement names shown in the syntax are synonymous and can be used interchangeably. Each time you run a report with the report command, all of the rows and columns in the table or view are available for use in the report specification. One exception to this is that Report-Writer silently ignores and does not print values for columns with unsupported data types such as long varchar, byte, byte varying, and long byte.
Note:  If Report-Writer encounters subsequent references to a column of an unsupported data type, such as within sort operations, it issues an error message and terminates the report.
You can use a delimited identifier (see Delimited Identifiers) for tablename if you have previously specified the .delimid statement.
If you specify a variable as the table, Report-Writer evaluates tablename during the loading of the report specification, before retrieving the data.
An SQL language report specification includes duplicate rows in the data for reports that use the .data, .table, or .view statements. To specify distinct rows, you can specify the ‑6 flag on the report command line.
Either the .data or the .query statement is a required statement for each report. The .data and .query statements are mutually exclusive; both cannot appear in the same report specification.