Grouping Sub Report data

astri

Hi All,

I am now developing a report about Apartment Rental using Aware IM 4.7

The report contains subreport. The rental data is displayed from the subreport. The concept of the report is that it shows all apartment records, and in each apartment record, the rental data is also displayed

The report run on business object Apartment (subreport run on business object Rent), and each Apartment record is displayed correctly in the report. But the subreport shows all rental data (for all Apartment) on each apartment record.

What I want is, for example when the report display Apartment data where Apartment.ApartmentNumber=401, the subreport will also display rental data from Rent.ApartmentNumber=401 only. If the next record is Apartment data from Apartment.ApartmentNumber=402,then the subreport will display rental data from Rent.ApartmentNumber=402.

I was assuming something like this applied in the subreport Query parameter "FIND Rent WHERE Rent.ApartmentNumber=Apartment.ApartmentNumber" but the query cannot recognize the Apartment.ApartmentNumber.

How to group the data on the subreport, so that it only shows data related to each Apartment Record?

Do you have any suggestion about this? I'm a newbie using Aware IM. Please forgive me if this question is really simple.

technopak

I assume you have a reference attribute in the Rent Object of type Apartment.

Then you must base the sub-report on a custom query with criteria something like this

RentObject.Apartment.ID = ThisApartment.ID

This criteria will only place Rent Object instances which reference the Apartment in the main report into the sub-report.

Applying this suggestion to your code, something like

FIND Rent WHERE Rent.ApartmentNumber=ThisApartment.ApartmentNumber

should also work.

That's how I got it to work anyhow ...... 🙂

If I can give you one other suggestion about sub-reports - try setting the height of your sub-report to just 1 pixel in the main report, and set the sub-report to expand its height as necessary. This will stop your report displaying blank lines as a sub-report where no Rent data exists - keeping your report nicely formatted.

Hope it helps,

Peter

astri

Hi technopak,

Thanks for your reply. It works 🙂
I think I was mistaken, the report did recognize Apartment.ApartmentNumber in the sub report query parameter.

Thanks for your other suggestion also for expanding the subreport. I looked into sub-report properties but didn't find option to auto expand the sub-report height.

technopak

Sorry Astri,

It's a while since I last did this, but here's how ....

You must set the properties of the individual elements of the sub-report to 'Collapse height when element is not printed' on the General tab, and then on the Conditions tab, click Properties, General and tick the 'Stretch Height to fit contents' box.

The key thing I found was to set each element height as small as possible, because the Report Generator will print empty space for the element even if there is no data to display - so keeping the empty element to 1 pixel in height minimises the lost space on your report. This applies to both the sub-report and the main report.

Peter

astri

Thanks for the tips, Peter. 🙂

astri

Hi Peter,

I checked on the report designer, there is no option to 'Collapse height when element is not printed' but there is option for the subreport's element properties to 'Print nothing when there is no data' (I mark this option).

I made the report element height into 1 pixel, apply 'Stretch Height to fit contents'. Still the report produce spaces between upper and lower element.

And also, though we have specified the distance between elements in the report designer, when we run the report, the distance can add up. Can't we create fixed position in the report?

technopak

Astri,

The Report Designer is not the most user friendly and only prints data off in bands. If the sub-report content is dynamic, then you need the various elements to expand or not print depending on whether data exists or not. It's not easy, but if you persevere it can produce what you're looking for.

In my earlier post, I forgot to mention that the elements of the sub-report must be conditional (attach conditions) so that they won't appear in the report if no data exists. It's in the conditions where you can set the height to stretch to fit the contents.

Hope that's a bit clearer 🙂

Peter

astri

I see..
thanks Peter!