Double-SubReport

rbuser

Hi,

just a simple question: Is it possible to have more than one SubReport?

e.g. a report for table "customer" should look consider orders and
payments and look somewhat like this

-Detail Customer
-Sub: All Orders for this Customer...
-Sub: All Payments for this customer...

There's no need to describe "howto" exactly, just the information if
it's possible and maybe a headwort would help a lot. I'm just starting
with a new report that should later on be extended in order to display
these subreports. If I knew this was possible it would make me feel
better while developing version 1.0 ;-)

Kind regards,

Mark

nicocizik

Hi Mark,

Yes it is possibile for a single report to contain two subreports. It is
also possible to have nested subreports for a Master-Detail-Detail
relationship. Once you place your subreports inside your report, be sure
you have them connected to the correct datapipeline by using the Report |
Data menu option.

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rbuser

Hi,

well I couldn't resist testing this feature immediately and though it
seemed to be easy to realise, there are either some bugs in RB or I do
not understand the documentation:

If my detail-tab is linked to the master tab, RB just shows a single
white page. If I unlink my detail-table setting "MasterSource" to ""
the report shows in a correct manner (with the detail-report showing
all existing detail-datasets within each master-dataset, of course - as
there's no matching filter for the details any more).

If I set a filter condition on the detail-dataset that results in an
"empty" dataset (like True=False) it works fine, too - and does not
show any details.

I realised that "bug" earlier on: RB shows an empty page, if the report
contains no data (which confuses several customers as they expect at
least header and footer with "zero"-values). This strange behaviour
seems to be similar - at least there are some single master-datasets
that do not have any details linked to it.

Is there any way to find out, why there's just drawn an empty page?

Kind regards,

Mark

nicocizik

Hi Mark,

By default the Report.NoDataBehaviors property is set to show a blank page
when the report contains no data. Try changing this to ndBlankReport and
see if it gives you the results you are after. You are probably going to
want to steer clear of using filters as this will slow your report
performance greatly.

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rbuser

Hi Nico,


... that's interesting - but what to do if the user doesn't want to
have all data printed but only data belonging to December 2003? :-(

Happy new year!

Mark

rbuser

Hi,

after changing the properties in order to get a blank report I
discovered the follwing:

RB only prints datasets that have subsets, like

CustNo 123: Mark Meyer
- Order #123
- Order #456

If the data looks like

---------------------------------------
CustNo 123: John Doe (no orders)

CustNo 456: Mark Meyer
- Order #123
- Order #456

CustNo 789: Tom Smith (no orders)
---------------------------------------

only "456" is printed.

I checked the tables that are linked to the report using datagrids -
the original data is OK - it's just report builder who's not printing
customers without orders...

Can you help?

Mark

rbuser

Nico Cizik (Digital Metaphors) wrote:


The EXE-File will do? I could extract the file from my Delphi7-project
but as it uses TurboDB instead of the BDE I'm not shure if it will help?

Kinf regards,

Mark

nicocizik

Hi Mark,

Instead of using filters to manipulate your output, try using the built-in
AutoSearch capabilities of ReportBuilder. Using AutoSearch, you could
either have a user select which year of results he or she would like to view
or select this yourself in code. For more information on creating
AutoSearch criteria, please see the ReportBuilder Developer's Guide or the
examples located in the \RBuilder\Demos\5. AutoSearch\... directory.

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nicocizik

Hi Mark,

If possible, please send a small example demonstrating this behavior in .zip
format to support@digital-metaphors.com and I'll take a look at it for you.

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nicocizik

Hi Mark,

One more thing I just thought of... if you are using datapipelines, be sure
the TppDataPipeline.SkipWhenNoRecords property is set to False on your
master pipeline. This is a published property and I believe the default is
True. If you still have the issue, please zip up the .exe and template file
(.rtm) so I can see your layout and perhaps recreate something similar using
the DBDEMOS database.

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rbuser

That's it!

Setting SkipWhenNoRecords on the master pipeline did not help. But
setting it to false for the detail-pipeline worked fine - though I
still do not understand the documentation (it's quite confusing): It
says:

"Setting this property to false will force the DetailBand to print once
for the empty dataset. All data-aware controls attached to the detail
DataPipeline will return nulls in this case."

Therefore RB should print a Sub-Reports Detail for every master detail
when setting SubPipeline.SkipWhenNoRecords to false - but fortunately
it does not.

It's not quite clear which DetailBand is meant here: "DetailBand" could
be the master "Detail" or the Subreports "Detail". In my case, no
Sub-DetailBands are printed if there are none (no "zero-bands"). That's
what I wanted and as it works fine...

To me it seems like SkipWhenNoRecors=True for a "Sub-Pipeline" makes RB
Skip the Master(!)-DetailBand!

Anyway - It works, so thanks a lot!

Kind regards,

Mark

nicocizik

Hi Mike,

You're right, it is not very clear which detail band will be printed when
this property is set to False. Fortunately it is the Master-Detail Band or
main Report's detail band that is printed once and not the subreport's. I
will update the help file for the next release with a bit more explaination.
Thanks.

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