BIRT result set values in specific cells - resultset

My query returns location_cd(string) and item_count(int). I only need certain rows from the result however and I need them to display in specific places in my layout so I don't think the table solution is going to work. Can I determine where I place the value for a particular row of the result set?
I am using a grid to display values for a number of fields. I cannot seem to be able to get the values from the results to show. The grid is bound to the result set. I even tried binding the cells to the result set but that didn't work either.
I checked in the query editor and there is a result set shown in the Preview so I know the query works. The complete and correct result set shows if I put a table on the page.
I tried inserting a Dynamic Text or Data object in a cell and used the expression:
dataSetRow["location_cd"]=="3SD"?dataSetRow["item_count"]:""
This returns a blank and does not seem to evaluate. I tested it with :
dataSetRow["location_cd"]=="3SD"?dataSetRow["item_count"]:"BLANK"
and got 'BLANK' to appear in that cell.
dataSetRow["location_cd"] and dataSetRow["item_count"] will display the location_cd and item_count from the first row of the result set. row.outer[] did the same thing. Obviously I am just hacking at this report at this point.
A co-worker suggested that she uses a JAVA if-statement in places like this but I could not get that to work either.
Any ideas or suggestions that will get me on the right road??
Thanks

An elegant option would be to use a HashMap storing the result of the dataset.
Declare a report variable named "values", with a new hashmap as default value (see image below)
Fill values in the onFetch script of the dataset: vars["values"].put(row["location_cd"],row["item_count"]);
Insert new data elements at any place of the report with expressions such: vars["values"].get("myFavoriteLocationCD");
Though it is important to note the dataset should be triggered by the report before these data elements.

The particular row you want to display you specify in a "Text" field inside your grid. Just drag and drop a "Text" field inside your grid. If you bound the fields you want to display to your grid, the "Text" field inside the grid inherits the bindings of its parent (the grid), so you can access the bindings automatically in the "Text" field.
You could try following steps, maybe that works.
Don't use "Dynamic Text" field, instead use a regular "Text" field
Ensure the fields of your query which you use, are bound to the grid (you sayed you already did)
Open the "Text" field
Change preselected pull-down entry "Auto" into "HTML"
Change preselected pull-down entry "Formatting" into "Dynamic Text"
Wrap your code in <value-of format="HTML"> your code goes here... </value-of>
Note: You should check in the "Expression Builder" of your "Text" field if you are able to access the fields you bound to the grid. If they are not available sth. went wrong with your binding. Avoid binding query records to cells this will drive you crazy.
If you want to display a list, ensure you didn't set a constant height in the row of your grid. Set the height to 100% than the row takes its height dynamically.
What about the idea to optimize your query, that only get the results you want are displayed, than you don’t need to filter them with java script? If you don’t need the filtered results in another place this would be the cleaner solution in my opinion.

Related

How to mimic values in multi page SSRS Report

I need a lab report that has several pages. Each test has a unique reference number and I would like it to appear in the header according to what I have on the page. At the moment I only see one reference number and it remains unchanged after switching to another page. See attached image.
If possible, I would like to get rid of the SampleNo column so that its value is only in the header
The easiest way to do this is to reference the the textbox in your tablix that contains the "Sample No.".
Click the textbox that you have highlighted in the tablix, show the properties window (F4 in Visual Studio - can't remember in Report Builder, I think View/Properties).
Find the Name property of the textbox, this is often the name of the field it contains but not always.
In the example below the textbox name is 'oYear`
Next, set the expression in your header to be something like
=FIRST(ReportItems!oYear.Value)
Change oYear to whatever textbox name in your tablix is.
ReportItems refers to the rendered object name so here we just get the first on each page.
Here the first two pages from a small sample of data which groups by year.

Access VBA Combobox Store Value in Column

I have an MS ACCESS Combo Box and I wish to change the value of one of the columns in a particular row. I get error "object required" when I run this line:
Me.ComboName.Column(12, intUseRow) = myVar
(If I am unable to use the above syntax then you should also know that the row I am trying to change is always going to be the "current" visible row so there may be another way of solving the problem due to this fact).
Thanks!
If you have a recordset that is bound to a Table/Query, you will need to change the underlying data then requery the combobox to see changes.
If you load it manually (like in the form load event) and have the comboBox Row Source Type to "Value List" - you should be able to update it like this:
Copy all the data from the selected row into variables.
Combobox.RemoveItem (selected index)
change the required variable to the new value.
construct the semicolon separated string for the value list entry
combobox.AddItem new-string.
a bit messy, but it works correctly!

Why did I have to manually set the .value from the .text on losing focus in an unbound textbox

I have an unbound textbox to accept the delete older than: number of days. It is in the report header. I set it to 30 days but I want the user to be able to change it. I was banging my head trying to figure out why entering 40 was not being accepted and it reverted back to 30 every time. I finally decided on using the lost_focus event to set .value to .text. That worked.
Further research showed that when the textbox get's focus text and value are both the same, 30 in my case. Changing the number in the text box to 40 shows the values of text at 40 and value at 30. Unless I specifically set Value to the value of text Access changes text to the value of value. This is different behavior than other places in Access such as forms.
Can anyone tell me why this might be? I can't find any setting that might do this. Is it because it's in a report header? what is the difference between this and every other text box I've ever used?
From a "best practices" viewpoint, Access Reports are not intended to be used interactively despite the ability to manipulate some unbound controls. Although workarounds can be implemented that function sufficiently well, such solutions are often incomplete and buggy and function differently depending on the active view: Report View vs. Print Preview. Appropriate design patterns include using Access Forms for specifying report options which then open the Report in a static configuration.
This may not satisfy the question "Why?" if seeking a deeper answer as to why Microsoft implemented inconsistent binding behavior in Access, or why they allowed interactive controls in reports at all if they don't behave the same way as in forms. But Access has plenty of other quirky behaviors that have no known/published explanation.
Regarding the priority of the Value property updating the Text property (and not vice versa): Value is the key field because it contains the actual data for the control (bound or unbound). Although it is natural to have a single control for both display and input (uh, that's how almost all controls work), the processes of displaying data and parsing user input are two distinct functions. The visual representation returned by the Text property can be manipulated using the various formatting properties, and technically could display an incomplete representation of the underlying Value data. If there are any conflicts between the stored Value property and the Text property, it is natural that the existing Value property has precedent.
My guess is that the automatic binding behavior was "relaxed" for reports to allow more flexible custom reporting output. First consider an Access Form in Datasheet view: An unbound Form control shows the same value for all records. Even if the control is edited while on a particular row, the updated value is displayed for all rows. The same control object is essentially repainted for each row and there is no concept of individual instances of the control that can hold different values. Bound controls have built-in code that repaint the control with data from the particular row, but there are still not multiple instances each "holding" the individual values. The visual output differs from an intuitive object-oriented paradigm where our minds what to assign each visual row its own in-memory instance of the controls--it just doesn't work like that in Access.
Unlike the Form behavior just described, the Report's Print Preview (and actual printed output) allows unbound controls to display different data per row using the Detail_Format() event. Within the Detail_Format() event, one can set the Value property of a control at which time the Text property is automatically updated according to various formatting properties. This update Text is then output for the current row. Perhaps (just guessing) that this behavior would not function properly if the Text property updated the value property. I suspect it would cause recursive events during report generation. Because reports are not meant to be interactive, relevant text-input parsing code was "disconnected" so that it doesn't behave like on a form.
All that explanation doesn't make Access any less frustrating nor remove its limitations, but at least learn to adapt and design things in the "Access-esque" way rather than fighting it.
your best bet is to design a form with the unbound combo boxes and have your data displayed in a subreport. I like to design my reports so that when values are updated the query for the recordsource of the report is generated doing this requires 2 queries to exist, one with all data possible and a filtered one as subreport recordsource. This will control the data for printing and also allow users to close or navigate away from the report and return to the data later.
Private Sub ComboBox1_AfterUpdate()
Dim Query1 as Object
Dim Temp_Name as Variant
Temp_Name = SubReport.SourceObject
SubReport.SourceObject = Empty
Set Query1 = Me.Form.Application.DBEngine.Workspaces(0).Databases(0).QueryDefs ("SubReport_Query")
Query1.SQL = "Select * Unfiltered_Query WHERE Field1 <= " ComboBox1 & ";"
SubReport.SourceObject = Temp_Name
End Sub

VB Getting the selected item from a List View

I have a list view with two columns and I'd like to be able to save the value of the leftmost column for the selected row, or even better make it so that once the user clicks on either the right or left column of any given row, the entire row selects and not only the field that was clicked.
However I'm struggling to get the field saved which is more crucial than the row highlighting.
In a list box it would be
string = listbox1.selecteditem.tostring
However this doesn't seem to work for the list view. It won't even let me put "Selecteditem" and instead requires I put selecteditems, however this doesn't seem to do what I want either.
When I use the code:
string = ListView1.SelectedItems.ToString
I get the result of
string = "System.Windows.Forms.ListView+SelectedListViewItemCollection"
Despite the selected field actually being "EGG".
I need to have two columns so can't switch to using a listbox, although that seems like it would be the easier solution.
When I tried googling this question I could only find things for C#
Set FullRowSelect on to get the entire row to select.
SelectedItems.ToString refers to the collection of selected items.
SelectedItems(0).Text refers to the first selected item's text property.

Is it possible to colour a cell with value from data in Cognos BI?

Let me first be clear. I'm not asking about how I do conditional formatting in Cognos BI. If there were a simple Red/Amber/Green colour scheme, based upon value ranges then I could do that. If it were a static list of colours, which never changed, I could also do that.
What I am after is accessing a hex colour code that is stored in my database, and I want to use that colour as my table cell background colour. This is something I commonly do in SSRS reports, but cannot see a method for in Cognos BI.
Is this even possible?
You can do this via the HTML object in Cognos.
The HTML object can get its definition from one of the three main ways:
1) Hard-coded text
2) Data Item Value
3) Report Expression
Obviously the first method provides no way to dynamically set the value. I couldn't get the second one to work at all. I'm not yet sure why. However, I was able to use the third type to work to allow dynamic setting of a visual style.
For the solution we'll assume you have a data item called [Color] which pulls a string value from a database in the standard hex form that is used in CSS: #xxxxxx, e.g. #CCCCCC. For the purpose of this example we'll assume it is in query Query1. The following steps describe how to set it up.
1) Add an HTML item right above your list
2) Add another HTML item at the bottom of your list
3) In the top HTML item add a span tag with a unique id such as:
<span id="list">
4) In the bottom HTML item add a closing span tag
</span>
5) Add a third HTML item before all of the other HTML items
6) Set the 'Source Type' property of the HTML item to 'Report Expression'
7) In the Report Expression put the following code:
'<style>
#list td {
background-color: ' + [Query1].[Color] + '
}
</style>'
8) Select the Page object and set the Query property to Query1
9) Click on the Properties property. Check the Color column to give the page access to that query-sourced value.
Now you can dynamically set the column color based on a database provided value. We used the span to give us a way to isolate just the table cells we want to manipulate.
The technique isn't perfect. For instance, the header cells also get their background changed to the color in question, which may or may not be desirable. This is because Cognos doesn't use the th tag for headers but instead renders them as normal cells (td).
I know it's quite and old post but just for completeness I'll add the references to get this working in html, pdf and excel.
To get this working not only for html but also for pdf and excel use a rich text item instead of a html item.
You can use following code in a query item for instance:
<span style="display:block; background-color:' + [Query Subject].[Query Item] + '"> </span>
The query item must then contain a valid color (e.g. rgb(255,0,0)) etc. which is defined by your data source.
Dragging a rich text item in a list and changing it to data item value and selecting the query item will work.
By using the span it will work for excel too, however to make sure it follows the size of the upper object in the hierarchy (the list column or a table etc) you want the display:block style.
Instead of the space in between the > < you can use any other query item that you want to appear as text.