I've been tasked with developing a report and I'm looking for ideas on how to approach it. I can develop the report with MsAccess, SQL Server, or VB--so answers applicable to any of those tools are acceptable. However, I'm especially interested in techniques that will work across the board.
Two things make the report unusual. First, while the report is basically a grid format, the number of rows and columns in the grid is data-driven and not known at design time. Think of a room reservation system. Each room is reported on a separate line and it has a separate column for each day. So, if the report is requested for N days, it will have N+1 columns: one to identify the room and one for each day. A 7-day report has 8 columns and 30-day report has 31 columns. I'm looking for techniques to deal with the varying number of columns, the actual number which cannot be determined until the report is run.
Second, the number of columns can be quite large. So, I'm also looking for techniques on ways to "split" the report if the number of columns exceeds what can comfortably fit on a page. But, I don't want to split the report in the middle if a column. What makes that complicated, is that I don't know the paper size until the report is generated.
I realize this is an open-ended sort of question, but certainly, it's come up before. Any ideas?
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