One of the report properties we reviewed earlier was ProcessingOnly. If that property is set to Yes, then the report object will not output a dataset for displaying or printing, but will simply do the processing of the data we program it to do. The beauty of this capability is that we can use the built-in processing loop of the NAV report object along with its sorting and filtering capabilities to create a variety of data updating routines with a minimum of programming. Use of report objects also gives us access to the Request Page to allow user input and guidance for the run. We could create the same functionality using code unit objects and programming all of the loops, filtering, user-interface Request Page, and so on, ourselves. However, with a Processing-Only Report, NAV gives us a lot of help, and makes it possible to create some powerful routines with minimal effort.

At the beginning of the run of a Processing-Only report, there is very little user interface variation compared to a normal printing report. The Processing-Only Request Page looks much as it would for a printing report, except that the choices to Print and Preview are not available. Everything else looks the same. Of course we have the big difference of no visible output at the end of processing.