Siebel Reports Administration Guide > Creating a Simple List Report >

Creating a New Report Versus Subclassing a Design

New report creation is in contrast to report subclassing. You create a new report when your requirements are not satisfied by any existing report and there are significant differences between your desired report and any existing report. You obtain a new report by subclassing when the differences between your new report and an existing report are minor and you want the new report to include any upgrades made to the old one.

The following are some situations in which you create a new report:

• When the list of fields in the report's object definitions differs from that in the existing report by more than a small number of fields.
• When the component structure of the report differs from those of related reports for example, with the addition or removal of a group section or subreport.

  NOTE:  Group sections are described in Reports with Group Sections. Subreports are described in Master-Detail Reports.

• When the custom report uses a new business component.

The following are some situations in which you subclass an existing report design:

• When you are deploying multiple similar versions of the same report showing slightly different data to different categories of users.
• When two reports show the same data but present it differently.