What is 'Form and Report Design' in Software Engineering?

Question

What is 'Form and Report Design' in Software Engineering?

Answer 1

It's definitely not the recognized name of any recognized Software Engineering sub-discipline. I've heard the phrase used mostly in discussing specific products such as MS Access and it doesn't seem to refer to anything deeper than its literal meaning -- how to design your own reports and forms!-)

Answer 2

I have no idea. It's not an industry term as far as I know.

So looking at the words it's probably "The design of Reports for use by [whoever the hell reads reports]". Now "Forms" has a few meanings one of which is actually software-related, so it could mean:

• The design of Forms for Windows Forms Apps
• The design of Forms for your employees to fill out and otherwise waste time when they could actually be accomplishing something.

Answer 3

Many methodologies from the "old school" will include "form and report design".

Today we call it graphic layout or "look and feel". We use HTML and CSS in web applications. In non-web applications we use our GUI frameworks.

Before HTML and the sophisticated HTML rendering engines, forms where a complex graphics problem. Before GUI frameworks, they were a very complex graphics problem. (Been there, done that.) Before they were graphics, it was a complex character layout problem to pack enough meaning into a 80x24 character space.

Before HTML and the idea of a browser, reports were separate batch applications which ran and produced printable files, usually in a single fixed-width font. Designing a report was a complex character layout problem to pack meaning into 132 characters by 66 lines (or 88 if you used "12-pitch" instead of "10-pitch").