Complex Reporting

[Chuck]

I have the following databases:

People

Jobs

Events

A job can be related to multiple people and a job can have multiple events.

The client wants a report of jobs with events separated by people. It would be formatted something like this:

Bill

[BobWeaver]

How about a JobEvent text field in the job file that has all the events concatenated together with a carriage return in between, done by a script or possibly calculation. Then a PeopleJob text field in the People file that concatenates the related JobEvent fields together with return between. Then, you will have variable length text fields that will slide.

[LiveOak]

The real conventional way to do this is to add a transaction file in which each record is a person/job/event. This could be populated from a two or three portal screen in the People file with a looping script. Once you break the task down to a bazillion records by person/job/event, sort by person/job/event, create person and job subsummaries, and put events in the body part. -bd

[BobWeaver]

Ooooh yeah.

I like your idea better.

[Chuck]

Thanks for the help. I'll give that a try, but not tonight. I'm tired of thinking about it.

Chuck

[Chuck]

LiveOak,

Given the limitation of the Go to Portal Row script step in that you can't specify the portal, is it straight forward to loop through two portals, one loop within another, or do I need to be aware of something else to do this. For instance, I anticipate that the script will look something like this:

Go to Record/Request/Page [ First ]

Loop

[kim]

I had the same dilema about a month ago. What I ended up doing was making one big "PRINT REPORT" database and imported the data in from all the individual databases (9 databases). Each database was given a unique number key by which I sort the subsummary by. Within the body I have all the fields listed in rows by each database. There is no need to set up a portal, so therefore the sliding function works to tighten things up.

[DoyleS]

This was a suggestion by someone else that I found very effective. Create 3 global fields portal1, portal2 and portal3. Place one in each of the portals and then use the go to field command to switch to whichever portal you need followed by the appropriate go to field command that you really wanted to go to. It is not elegant but it works well.

..Doyle