report generator leaking lines

rocketman

Built a simple report with a sub report. Members statement of accounts.

One line for the members name plus current balance as a report date, hen below a sub report containing all transaction for that member for a given period of time. The sub repoert is set to print nothing if there is no data. There are alays a number o members who will have no activity in the two weeks between each print run.

All the main report bands are set to 0 except for the Group header which is 10 pt, as are the bands in th sub report.

The line spacing in the sub report is fine but something is going wrong in the main report. Instead of getting:

Member1
Member 2
Member3
Transacttion1
Transction 2
Transaction 3
Member 4
Etc etc

I'm Getting

Member 1

Member 2

Member 3
Transction
Transaction
Transaction

Member 4

It's like it is creating some space for the sub report even though there is nothing to print. With 150 or so members this report is generation twice as much paper as the report from our old Access system.

Any ideas what is going wrong - or is the Aware Report generator still its weakest part?

kklosson

Are you saying that you have group bands in the sub report?

I can't provide a definitive solution but I have fought many battles with the report engine. In my experience, one of its greatest weaknesses is pagination and space management. I get reports all the time that want to break in the middle of a page because the report engine thinks it's out of page space (or something).

A couple of tips that may help...

When placing a sub report into a report, set the height of the sub report to the minimum (I use 2px).

Wherever practical, make your sub reports force a page break (in title section of the report). This helps the engine stay on track. Depending on your purpose, this may not be an option.

In a sub report, don't waste space and keep it simple. While it's possible to have bands and groups in sub reports, I think it complicates the problem you are having. If you can break things apart, try it that way.

Not that I have solved the problem you have, but my complex reports tend to be built with a shell report containing sub reports with all of the elements I need. All in an attempt to solve pagination/space issues.

Is reporting the weak link? Prolly.
This issue has come up often:
https://forum.awareim.com/d/4054>

I've had some discussion with support (I can't remember if it was public or not) and my take was:

The original implementation of Jasper Reports was a fairly big lift.
Jasper reports has evolved to where updating the JR implementation would be another very big task.
JR has changed its licensing and there are some new complications.

I paid for a support request about a year ago to get a very serious issue fixed (sub reports were not printing in the order applied in design). They fixed it but I don't think they like playing in the JR code (we all have something we hate).

My take is, the Report engine works but does have a few challenges. I would encourage Support to make sure that what IS offered in the report engine works as it should. It's pretty close and a little time spent there would be a good investment in my opinion.

rocketman

Hi KKlossen,

Thanks for the tip, I actually discovered in the end that - in the main report I had two calls to the sub report (one was hidden under the other, probably as a result of so many attempts at resizing the bands.

Once I'd gotten rid of the the spurrius one the spacing came down to a liveable with level. Not perfect - but releasable.

BUT note to AwareIM support, the report generator does seem to be creating space for the sub report even though it doesn't print anything. For those members with activity, the detail section of the sub report is spaced perfectly.

Get the pagination sorted and the report generator is liveable with. Following the thread posted by Kklossen inhis reply, AwareIM know my views. Priority 1 has to be full functionality and support for iPad. This is a growing and likely to be vast market for sales staff and travelling execs which we are not able to currently address. I know we are waiting for the Sencha lot to release their Touch modules. For me the priority has to be getting those linked into AwareIM at the earliest possible opportunity