elementGroup and printWhenExpression

By: Chuck Deal - cdeal
elementGroup and printWhenExpression
2003-04-23 05:53
Would it be possible to have the attribute "printWhenExpression" work for elementGroups? This would be useful if you have a bunchh of related report items. If you were to group them and set that attriubute, then all of the elements in the group would affected.

This helps the maintainability of the report. It also prevents duplication of the printWhenExpression logic for each element within the group.

I know that I could probably acheive a similar effect by using multiple "dummy" groups. However, I'm not sure that that is the cleanest solution to all problems. For instance, in my case, I have a group that contains multiple related groups. To make my situation work, I would not only have to put the printWhenExpression for the "main" group but also the individual printWhenExpression for the "related" groups. This makes for potentially complicated code.

I present all of this only to build my case for the attribute. Does anyone else have an opinion?

Chuck Deal




By: Chuck Deal - cdeal
RE: elementGroup and printWhenExpression
2003-04-23 07:56
Actually, after re-reading my post, this argument also goes towards having multiple bands within a given group.

If that were possible (I would prefer that), then modifying elementGroup would not be necessary (at least for my case).




By: Teodor Danciu - teodord
RE: elementGroup and printWhenExpression
2003-04-24 06:41

Hi,

You can split a band into mutiple bands using the
dummy groups trick.

For example, you can split a group header into
multiple bands if you duplicate your group and
distribute the group header elements between the
two group headers that you obtain.
Duplicating a group means creating a new group
with the same group expression.

The detail band can be split by using multiple dummy groups that have the REPORT_COUNT
variable as their expression.

I hope this helps.
Teodor