Dynamic Report Group Breaks?

[Raymond Lyons]

I have tried everything I can think of to set the group break in a report dynamically through use of global variables, to no avail. I would like to be able to do this in both v4.5 and v5.

Here�s a simplified version of the situation: I want to be able to have one report layout with one group break (actually more but lets keep it simple), but at run time (in a dialog) I want the user to select which of many date fields (or character but again let�s keep it simple for now) is to be the break field.. Part of the problem is that one can�t just make the global variable be either Tablename->fieldname or �Tablename->filedname� because at best that�s only going to put the current field value in the variable and the report won�t break on anything. I have tried lots of other tricks, all except the right one, assuming there is a way to do this in the first place. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Assuming there is a solution to the above, is there also any way to allow the user to determine whether each break starts on a new page (possibly through manipulation of whatever file the report definition is in)?

Of course I could just have multiple version of one basic report layout. However, we are talking about a lot of layouts (like maybe 50!) if I go that route, which, among other negatives, would greatly increase maintenance time whenever a tweak in the layouts were needed.

Raymond Lyons

[Selwyn Rabins]

RE: Dynamic Report Group Breaks?

I don't think that this can be done at present.

in theory, if you had defined a global variable, for example:

dim global br as c
br = "firstname"


then if you had defined the break expression for the report as (for example)

left(eval(var->br),1)

you might expect it to work.

however it does not work because the report writer is not expecting to see variables in the break expression. it would of course be possible to make the report writer understand this break expression, but it is not currently on our to do list.

[JohnZaleski]

RE: Dynamic Report Group Breaks?

Raynond or Selwyn,

What if you defined a calculated field. Something like the following:
NAMEBREAK = IF(var->rep_param = "1",last_name,first_name)
Then you put the calculated field NAMEBREAK in as the report break expression.

John