Custom Styling Sheets for Batch Reporting

[joseph_birch]

Hey All,

I am creating a custom styling sheet that will be used for batch reporting. I was wondering what type of styling sheet would work best, PROC TEMPLATE file or a CSS file? Or would a SAS Web Application Theme be the way to go for batch reporting?

Thanks

[RW9]

Well, I don;t know web report studio particuarly well.  What I would say is there is a difference in the use of SAS templates and CSS files.  A template applies to output as it is generated from SAS, i.e. the file is created there is no other files, all styles and layouts are in that file. Thus to apply another style to the document later on is quite difficult, however the benefit is you only get one file, so easy to distribute.

A CSS file on the other hand is a style which is applied at render time.  So you have two files, the data, and the css which shows how to render the data.  This is useful as you can change the style easily, and re-render the data, however you have mutiple files, and only certain applications can load and render.  

Generally speaking I would say that CSS would be bettter if the data is to be rendered on many machines which may have different resolutions/setups as then it is dynamic.  Template and one file would be better if you need to manually send files around, or if a specific file format is required.

[boemskats]

Can you be more specific by what you mean with Batch Reporting? You mean generating HTML reports using ODS, right?

We often get involved in modernisation projects of legacy systems, and often one of the things people are most impressed with is how awesome you can make and old school ODS report look with just a decent css3 stylesheet. Have a look at the stylesheet=(url="relativecsspath.css") option. It's good, and quite often you can either reuse css used elsewhere in your organisation, or delegate the styling work to someone from your digital / design dept (again, it's just css). Just keep in mind the browser that you're targetting.