Report Sections

Report sections are the basic components of a report. Most reports include more than one section. You can use some sections for special purposes, such as performing calculations and totaling. Section types include:

• Report header and report footer sections.

  A report header section appears once at the beginning of the report. A report footer section appears once at the end of the report on its own page. You typically populate these sections using constants and variables. You can define only one of each of these sections per report.

• Page header and page footer sections.

  A page header section appears at the beginning of each page of the report. A page footer section appears at the bottom of each page of the report. You typically populate these sections using constants and variables. You can only define one of each of these sections per report.

• Detail sections

  Detail sections present the information that the report is designed to convey. The three types of detail sections are:

  • Columnar

  • Group

  • Tabular

From the Report Director in RDA, there is a fourth option for creating application reports. This option actually uses one of the three types of detail sections already mentioned—columnar, group, or tabular. The section layout of a detail section is typically populated using fields from a business view. Business views are used to access data from one or more database tables. Business views present a subset of data relevant to the immediate business requirement. Business views provide a link between the data in the database and the report that you are creating.

In addition to the business view fields that you select, you can define and add data fields to the detail report section, such as data dictionary fields, constants, and variables.

• Level break header sections

  Define level break fields for use in level break header sections. Level break header sections are used to further organize data.

• Level break footer sections

  Define level break fields for use in level break footer sections. Level break footer sections are used to calculate and display totals.

A level break occurs during the processing of a report when the value of a data sequencing field, which is also defined as a level break field, changes. A set of records that contains the same value for this defined field is in the same level. For example, in an address book report that is sequenced by search type, where the search type field is also defined as a level break field, all of the records having the same search type are in the same level. (All records with a search type of E for employees are in the same level.) When the value of the search type field changes, a level break occurs. (When the search type value changes from E for employees to C for customers, a level break occurs.) Level breaks are used to group large amounts of data into more manageable units. Level break headers provide a descriptive heading prior to the associated data. Level break footers are used to include aggregates with descriptive labels in the report.