Code On Time: Reports

Thursday, December 20, 2012Print Subscribe

Let’s add header and footer elements that will display information about the order.

Header

Drag the Text Box item from the Toolbox into the center of the header area.

Double-click on the text box and type in “Order #[OrderID]”. The bracketed statement will automatically be replaced by an expression that evaluates as the OrderID of the first order detail at run-time.

Select all the text. On the toolbar, set the Font Size to “20”. Make the text bold and underlined. Using the handles on the textbox, expand the box so that all the text is visible on one line.

Drag two more Text Box elements onto the left side of the header. Insert the following text:

Text

Customer:

[OrderCustomerCompanyName]

Bold the text in the first box, and expand the second text box.

Configure a few more text boxes shown next.

Employee:	[OrderEmployeeLastName]
Order Date:	[OrderOrderDate]
Required Date:	[OrderRequiredDate]
Shipped Date:	[OrderShippedDate]

This is how the header may look in the report designer.

Create five more pairs of text boxes in the next column.

Address:	[OrderShipAddress]
City:	[OrderShipCity]
Region:	[OrderShipRegion]
Postal Code:	[OrderShipPostalCode]
Country:	[OrderShipCountry]

For reference, see the next picture.

Footer

Insert the following text box pairs in the left side of the footer area:

Ship Name:	[OrderShipName]
Ship Via:	[OrderShipViaCompanyName]

On the right side of the footer, add placeholders for Subtotal, Freight, and Total.

Subtotal:
Freight:	[OrderFreight]
Total:

The footer will look as in the following screenshot:

The Subtotal and Total fields need to be calculated. Right-click on the text box to the right of “Subtotal”, and press Expression.

Specify the following expression:

Property	Value
Expression	=Sum(Fields!ExtendedPrice.Value, "OrderDetails")

Press OK to insert the expression into the text box.

Right-click on the text box next to “Total”, and press Expression. Specify the following expression:

Property	Value
Expression	=Sum(Fields!ExtendedPrice.Value, "OrderDetails") + First(Fields!OrderFreight.Value, "OrderDetails")

Press OK to save.

The last step is to perform some minor changes to the rendering of data.

Labels: Application Builder, Reports, Web Application Generator

Saturday, December 15, 2012Print Subscribe

Order Form Sample–Part 34

Let’s add a tablix that will display a list of order details.

Activate the Toolbox window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+X keyboard shortcut. Click on the Pin icon in the top right corner of the window to keep it open.

Drag Table item into the center section of the report to add a tablix element.

Mouse over the cell in the first column, second row, and click on the icon that appears in the top right corner.

Click on ProductProductName data item from the list to add it to the cell.

The data item will be added to the cell, and the header will be automatically labeled. Double-click on the label text and change to “Product Name”.

Add six more fields with the following labels. To add more columns, right-click on a column and press Insert Column | Right.

Field	Label
UnitPrice	Unit Price
Quantity	Quantity
Discount	Discount
ProductCategoryCategoryName	Category
ProductSupplierCompanyName	Company
ExtendedPrice	Extended Price

The tablix must look as shown in this picture:

Click and drag on the dividers in the grey area above the columns to expand the columns. Expand the columns to take up all the space on the page. Make sure to allocate the most horizontal space to ProductProductName, ProductCategoryCategoryName, and ProductSupplierCompanyName.

Note that the report page should not exceed a width of 10”. You can display a ruler by clicking on Report | View | Ruler in the Visual Studio menu.

Click on the first header cell. Hold Shift, and click on the last cell. On the toolbar, click on the Bold icon to make all text bold. Then click on the Foreground Color icon.

Select the color “Midnight Blue”.

Press OK to change the color of the text.

Highlight all cells in both rows. On the toolbar, activate the Border dropdown, and select No Border to turn off the default grey borders.

Then, activate the Border Color immediately to the left and select “Gray”. Press Bottom Border to turn on a single black border on the bottom.

Labels: Reports, Tutorials, Web Application Generator

Saturday, December 15, 2012Print Subscribe

Order Form Sample–Part 33

Let’s prepare the report template for customization.

On the Project Designer toolbar, press Develop to open the project in Visual Studio.

In the Solution Explorer, double-click on ~\Reports\OrderDetails_report1.rdlc file.

The default report template includes all the fields present in the view.

Let’s start over with a clean slate. Press Ctrl+A keyboard shortcut to select all elements in the report. Right-click and press Delete.

The report implementation strategy requires either filtering or grouping of data.

Strategy	Description
Simple Filtered Report	This template requires data filtering for accurate presentation of data. It is easier to implement.
Report with Multi-Level Grouping	This template groups order details first by CustomerID, and then by OrderID. The data does not have to be pre-filtered for accurate presentation. The report customization is more complex.

Labels: Application Builder, Reports, Web Application Generator