Report Design Aid (RDA) - Text Variables

There is a tool in RDA that I have seen sitting there for years, but I've never really paid attention to it.  There were a few times I looked at it quickly wondering what it was and tinkered with it a bit, but quickly moved on thinking I would check into it later.  Well, I finally took some time to figure out what it does.

The tool is called "Text Variables".

It works at the section level, and you get to it by right-clicking on a non-populated part of the section and selecting "Text Variables".

This is a very simple tool that is designed for holding strings.  You can type in a string (up to 170 characters) and it will be available as a variable that you can assign in ER.  These Text Variables show up as TV in the ER assignment statement form.

Now, it's pretty easy to just go ahead and create string variables in ER and assign text to those variables, but this tool provides a central place to put this kind of text so you don't have to go searching through ER to find it.  Keep in mind that the scope for these TV variables is at the section level.

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