Accessing javabean collection in table in subreport

[jeffm212]

Hi all,

I know there have been a variety of questions related to this but none that answer the exact question I have... or at least none that answer it completely for me.  

I know a table is basically a subreport insomuch as it can be passed a collection where it gets it's data from but afaik it can't be saved as a separate reusable subreport .jrxml.  The subreport does exactly what I need easily except formatting to look like a table is a bit of a pita. So, I'm wondering if there is some way to add a table to a subreport [i know this can be done, but...] without having to use a parameter to get the collection for the table?

It seems there should be an easy way to pass a collection through to the subreport that can just be used as the dataset for the table, however, that doesn't seem possible. I don't want to deal with a parameter hashmap if I can avoid it.  Additionally, if the dataset for the table in the subreport HAS to be passed as a paremeter how can the subreport be developed/tested directly in Jaspersoft with mock data?

Thanks for any insight you can provide.