Question

MultiColumn Reports

Asked by: nacsmmiller

There doesn't seem to be a good way to create a two column report in Report Server for SQL Server 2005.  I am trying to create a two column directory report in alphabetical order.  If a particular entry won't fit on one column, I need it to go to the next section without messing up the alphabetical order.  

The built-in two column functionality is unusable.  The "Keep group together" option doesn't work, and so groups of data are split between columns or even pages.  An even bigger problem is that the time that it takes to export the data into PDF or TIFF (the only two formats supported by this function) increases exponentially based on the amount of data returned in the report.  The only report that was even usable returned less than 50 rows; several reports timed out before they ever finished.  

One other option that I tried was to create two lists, which alternated visibility based on whether the rownumber was odd or even.  This seemed to work as long as every entry had the same number of data elements.  If this wasn't the case, for instance, if one column had null in the field where the other had data, one column would get ahead of the other, and they would no longer be in alphabetical order.  This method is incredibly data dependant, and therefore unreliable.  This also breaks down if the data has to be broken down into segments.  For instance, if people in different positions need to be listed in different sections, and the first person in that section has an odd rownumber, the alphabet is reversed.  It's even worse if there is only one person in a group; the spacing is wrong.

Has anyone thought of a better way to do this?

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Asked On
2009-01-22 at 13:00:22ID24075542
Tags

SSRS

,

Visual Studio 2005

,

SQL Server 2005

,

Report Server

Topics

MS SQL Server

,

SQL Server 2005

,

SQL Reporting

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
2

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Answers

 

by: expertsoulPosted on 2009-01-22 at 13:23:28ID: 23443804

Not sure if it is what you need. But, it is something similar, which I though you may be able to fit into your requirement.

We have NTILE Function in SQL Server 2005.
I have attached an example below which you can run on adventureworks. Here ..If total count is greater than 200 it will divide the total rows into two equal columns. You will get final resultset with last column as 1 or 2, which you can map to your columns in display.

Order will be maintained based on ORDER By clause in NTILE statement.

use adventureworks
Create table #temp(OrderId int, CustomerId int) 
Insert into #temp
Select
  SalesOrderID, CustomerID
From
  Sales.SalesOrderHeader
Where
  SalesOrderID < 44000
Order By
  CustomerID
Declare @count int;
Set @Count = (Select Count(*) from #Temp);
IF(@Count > 200)
BEGIN
	Select *, NTILE(2) OVER (ORDER BY CustomerId) as [Rank] From #Temp
END
ELSE
BEGIN
	Select *, 1 From #Temp
END
drop table #temp

                                              
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by: JCinDEPosted on 2009-01-23 at 06:09:25ID: 23448984

The "keep together" functionality of SSRS applies to the whole control, be it a table, matrix or list. That's a bit counter-intuitive when what you want is to keep groups together.

You can still do it, though, by embedding your table in a list.

Add a list to the report and set its Detail Group to the same group option as the top level group of your table. Then drop the table into the list and check the table's "keep together" option.

This way you don't have a single table control, but several - one for each top level group -  and the "keep together" option of each will give you the desired effect.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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