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Bug with SubReports

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    Bug with SubReports

    Referencing the post from last April "Subreports gone AWOL"

    Is Alpha going to fix this problem or has anyone come up with a solution. I read John's recommendation, but I don't understand what he meant.

    I just spend an awful lot of time designing a report only to find this problem.

    I wish that there was some space devoted to this web site which addressed these known problems or at least made note of them.
    Alpha 5 Version 11
    AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
    DBF's and MySql
    Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

    Ron Anusiewicz

    #2
    RE: Bug with SubReports

    Ron,

    For future reference, if you had replied to the last message posted in the other thread that entire thread would have moved to the top of the list. Now, no one can tell what you're talking about without going to the trouble to go find the other thread. -- tom

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Bug with SubReports

      Hello Ronald:

      I agree with Tom, it would have been easier if you just added a new reply to the end that thread.

      As you probably know, Alpha is simply phenomenal when it comes to fixing bugs in their product. Users describe bugs in this forum and within a very short period of time, they are fixed. However, I don't think that is the case with this Sub Report issue.

      I don't have any factual information, but I have a feeling that tech support couldn't duplicate the problem or they feel it is a trivial issue and they have more pressing matters to work on. Or maybe they cannot find a solution? For whatever reason, it appears as if this problem still exists.

      I just happened to be talking with another user who said this problem regularly occurred with Win 98, but it cropped up only intermittently when he moved up to Win 2000. What operating system are you using?

      Robert T

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Bug with SubReports

        Ron

        Can you post what you have or email it to me?

        I found the post that you were refering to with the search and found that one subreport problem occurs when the first grouping has one of the one to manys without any children.
        And there have to be three one to manys from the parent.

        The interesting part is that if it is any subsequent group can have a one to many without children, but will still report the others.

        Now if you use the report current record from a form and show the later group, for the report it becomes the first and only group and therefore doesn't print the subreport items.

        Makes for an interesting situation where some groups print (when all are shown), put don't print when they are the first group.

        I'd like to see if your circumstance fits that or is something else.
        Al Buchholz
        Bookwood Systems, LTD
        Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

        Occam's Razor - KISS
        Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
        Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
        When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
        "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
        Albert Einstein

        http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Bug with SubReports

          First I'm very, very sorry I didn't continue the original post. I'll never do it again. Please forgive me.

          Second, it happens on Win 98 and Win XP.

          The set structure is a parent, a child and 6 grandchild tables. All grandchild tables are one to many.

          If the first grandchild (first subreport) has no records to be printed, then the fourth subreport will not print.

          If I put a record into the first grandchild (first subreport), then the fourth subreport prints.

          Al, I'm short on time but I will get back to you regarding your e-mail.

          Ron
          Alpha 5 Version 11
          AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
          DBF's and MySql
          Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

          Ron Anusiewicz

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Bug with SubReports

            Hello Ron:

            There is no need to apologize reference the thread issue, we mentioned that to help you in future inquiries.

            Since there still isn't any fix from Alpha Software, is it possible to ensure your first grandchild table always has at least one record, even if it's a meaningless one? For now, that seems like the easiest work around.

            Robert T

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Bug with SubReports

              Ron

              Does this happen with every group of the child records or just in the first group?

              I sent the same database to you that I sent to Selwyn and he was able to reproduce the problem that I identified.

              Now I'm trying to confirm if the problem that you have identified is the same problem or another.

              It would help us clear up this problem.
              Al Buchholz
              Bookwood Systems, LTD
              Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

              Occam's Razor - KISS
              Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
              Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
              When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
              "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
              Albert Einstein

              http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Bug with SubReports

                I just ran a test invoice.

                The first item #1 has no labor (The first sub-report).
                There are 4 sub-reports that follow. Each sub-report has a record. When I print the report, none of the sub-reports print.

                I then added a #2. It has no labor either, however; all the sub-reports printed.

                So it appears that it's only the very first time that the report calls for the sub-reports and only if the first sub-report has no records.

                I'm attaching a screen shot. Item #1 has records in all the sub-reports except for the first sub-report which is Labor.

                Item #2 is the same as item #1.

                Item #3 has records in all sub-reports except for Outside Work.

                Items #2 & #3 printed correctly, #1 did not.

                Item #4 has no labor and just one record in one sub-report. It has no labor, yet the misc sub-report printed.

                I hope this helps.

                Ron
                Alpha 5 Version 11
                AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
                DBF's and MySql
                Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

                Ron Anusiewicz

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Bug with SubReports

                  That pictures doesn't look very good.

                  Try this one.
                  Alpha 5 Version 11
                  AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
                  DBF's and MySql
                  Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

                  Ron Anusiewicz

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Bug with SubReports

                    Ron

                    That's the same error that I found. It can be avoided by adding a dummy record which involves some preprocessing.

                    Even if the dummy record is filter out by the report selection filter, all the sub reports display the proper records.

                    For me to get the dummy record, I subtracted the child table from the parent giving all of the parents with missing children. Then appended from the result to the child table with an added field to indicate that the record was 'automatically' generated and therefore should be disposed of at a proper time.

                    I found that if any of the sub reports has no records, then none would print, I repeat that process for each sub report table to be sure that the records are there.

                    I imagine that other ways are available to do that ( xbasic - read parent scan child?) and some are better in particular circumstances.

                    I'm not advocating it as a solution, but it is a work around and can be scripted.

                    It is more important to find out if anything else needs to be looked at by Alpha development while they are in there fixing this.

                    Al Buchholz
                    Bookwood Systems, LTD
                    Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

                    Occam's Razor - KISS
                    Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
                    Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
                    When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
                    "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                    Albert Einstein

                    http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: Bug with SubReports

                      Hello Al,

                      I may have been the instigator of the original thread on this, back in version 4 days. This issue caused me no small headache as I had a system in production for almost a year before this issue was discovered. The application was an invoicing application, so for the better part of a year, a portion of the invoices had been wrong, and not in my clients favor. I have played quite a bit with it, and have since sworn off using sub-reports because of this issue. Here is what I found:

                      Two one-to-many links to a parent table, I�ll call the child tables, child1 and child2. Place child1 on a subreport on report, then place child2 on a subreport on the same report. If child1 doesn�t have any records, but child2 does, the child2 records do not print. If you edit the report, delete both subreports. Save the report, then add back in a subreport for child2, then the second subreport for child1, the problem reverses. If there are no records in child2, then the child1 subreport will not print any records. This isn�t repeatable every time, that is probably why Alpha has not fixed this. But I found that once this problem crops up, it continues on every situation that meets the above criteria. Copy the entire system to a different computer and the problem will disappear, only to crop up later. When I first saw this issue, I went into the report, made a meaningless change, saved it, then did a database compact. The problem went away, only to come back a week or so later, on a working system where no changes had been made to the data dictionary files (it was on runtime).

                      I was consistently able to make the problem go away by putting a bogus sort order on each of the child tables, something like: if(1=1,datefield,datefield) or something like that.

                      At the time, I sent a sample database that was fairly consistently showing this problem to Alpha, but I don�t know if they were able to duplicate it.

                      The issue of records for some unknown reason ceasing to print, left me with little confidence in subreports.

                      Jim

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: Bug with SubReports

                        Did you try putting each subreport on a different conditional object. The condition is show the subreport if records exist. The exist function could be used for the condition - if memory serves me that worked better than the scanning function.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: Bug with SubReports

                          I read all the posts on this subject. Some of the work arounds quite frankly seemed complicated and some I just don't understand.

                          Being a person who trys the simple things, I sincerely believe I have solved my problem with a very simple solution.

                          My report is an invoice. The first sub-report in the detail section is for labor. I simply added an empty text box on the same line as the labor text. I then added IF statements to the text on that line. If the man hours = 0, then text = "", text.

                          So far in my testing, this approach appears to be working perfectly.

                          Ron
                          Alpha 5 Version 11
                          AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
                          DBF's and MySql
                          Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

                          Ron Anusiewicz

                          Comment


                            #14
                            RE: Bug with SubReports

                            Hello John,

                            Actually, I ended up putting both child table fields on a single conditional object and was able to create a 'continuous' browse type effect with intersperced fields from two different tables, ordered by date. So, in the end, I like this approach better than the two seperate sub-reports for this particular application. It allows me to do a true running balance report with multiple tables.

                            Jim

                            Comment


                              #15
                              RE: Bug with SubReports

                              Well, my little trick has met with partial failure.

                              My trick works with the full version and the runtime version as long as the database files are on a local hard drive.

                              However; it fails when the database files reside on a network drive.

                              Jim, could you please explain what you did. I think I understand, but it's still grey to me.

                              Thanks,

                              Ron
                              Alpha 5 Version 11
                              AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
                              DBF's and MySql
                              Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

                              Ron Anusiewicz

                              Comment

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