Base report: is is possible to have more than one detail section

[dr_bob]

I am trying to create a roster style report. Occasionally, a given person will have a “backup” person, indicated by additional fields on the query record not being blank. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough space to simply add the additional name on the end of the line. What I would like would be to simply have a second line in the output for this case. I can do conditional printing on fields, but even if the field is not printed, it still takes up space. So if I have fields for the backup in the detail section, I always get a blank line, even if I put a conditional print on the fields in the second line. What I would like is a second detail section (that I can put a conditional print on) so that it only gets printed when there is a backup person. Yeah, I know that I should probably change my query to simply make a second record for the backup person, but then I would get all of the fields the same for each record, and that isn’t ideal either. What I would like is something like this:
BLOCK Name Phone
1204 John Doe 999-555-1212
Jane Smith 111-555-1212
1205 George Smith
1206 Claudia Schiffer 999-555-9999

The best that I can do is:
BLOCK Name Phone
1204 John Doe 999-555-1212
Jane Smith 111-555-1212
1205 George Smith

1206 Claudia Schiffer 999-555-9999

which isn’t ideal.

I hope that this is clear.

[RobertG]

There is only one Detail section possible in a report. If you need more than one section you have to put content into the first group, which is shown directly above Detail.

Don’t understand, what you want to get without any example.

Best you could do: Report is slow, SQL of you database runs faster. Create a View, which is executed by database directly. Try to create the query for this view to get the whole content you want for the Detail section.

[nicholas59]

Goodday Doctor,

It would be kin to post an odb file. I understand you have a table with no PK, isn’t it? Pardon me, but i guess you need a 2nd one (provided relationship). So, within the MainForm, you may duplicate your fields, which would show in the Dynamic Report.

Should you ask me to do an example, i’ll see what i could do.

Regards
phone booklet.odb (21.2 KB)

[cpb]

@dr_bob,
you can use concatenation in conjunction with CHAR(10) (line feed) and the ‘Auto Grow’ function in Report Builder.
.
‘Auto Grow’ is not perfect, if I need to use it on any field then I set all fields to ‘Auto Grow’ = Yes.
.
because we know nothing about your database I have uploaded a HSQLDB embedded attachment in order to demonstrate the solution.
here is the single line of SQL which when used with ‘Auto Grow’ does the trick:

"GivenPerson" || coalesce(char(10) || "BackupPerson",'') "Person"

BackupPersonReport.odb (9.8 KB)

[nicholas59]

Hi Doc, I’m back.

You may also use SELECT CONCAT(LastName || ‘-’ || PhoneNumber)

Would kindly ask you to give a glance to my file.

Regards

Nuovo database.odb (4.0 KB)

[dr_bob]

I figured it out. I’m not really too concerned about speed in creating the reports, as a) they are small and b) I don’t run them very often, so I just used the report facilities. I changed the field in the Detail from, eg,
BCName to IF(ISBLANK([BU_BCName]);[BCName];[BCName]&unichar(10)&[BU_BCName]). The difficult part was discovering the the concatenation symbol in the report writer is “&” and not “||” and that “char(10)” has to be “unichar(10)”. And, of course, I made the field “Autogrow”.

Thanks, everyone!