About nested reports
A nested report is a report within another report.
There are two ways to create reports containing nested reports:
-
Create a composite report
using the Composite presentation style -
Place a nested report in another report
About creating a composite report
You can choose the Composite presentation style to create
a new report that consists entirely of one or more nested reports.
This type of report is called a composite report. A composite report
is a container for other reports.
You can use composite reports to print more than one report
on a page.
Composite report
For example, the following composite report consists of three
tabular reports. One of the tabular reports includes a graph:
Composite report in the Design view
In the Design view, you see three boxes that represent the
individual tabular reports that are included in the composite report.
The only additional controls in this example are a title, date,
and page number:
About placing a nested report within another
report
You can place one or more reports within another report. The
report you place is called the nested report. You can place a nested
report in any type of report except crosstab. Most of the time you
will place nested reports in freeform or tabular reports.
Often, the information in the nested report depends on information
in the report in which it is placed (the base report). The nested
report and the base report are related to each other by some common
data. The base report and the nested report have a master/detail
relationship.
Freeform report with a related nested report
For example, the following freeform report lists all information
about a customer and then includes a related nested report (which
happens to be a tabular report). The related nested report lists
every order that the customer has ever placed. The base report supplies
the customer ID to the nested report, which requires a customer
ID as a retrieval argument. This is an example of a master/detail
relationship—one customer has many orders:
What you see in the Design view
In the Design view, you see everything in the base report
plus a box that represents the related nested report:
The difference between nested and composite reports
There are two important differences between nesting using
the Composite style and nesting a report within a base report.
Data sources
The composite report does not have a data source—it
is just a container for nested reports. In contrast, a base report
with a nested report in it has a data source. The nested report
has its own data source.
Related nesting
The composite report cannot be used to relate reports to each
other in the database sense. One report cannot feed a value to another report,
which is what happens in a master/detail report. If you
want to relate reports to each other so that you can create a master/detail
report, you need to place a nested report within a base report.
How retrieval works
When you preview (run) a composite report, PowerBuilder retrieves
all the rows for one nested report, and then for another nested
report, and so on until all retrieval is complete. Your computer must
have a default printer specified, because composite reports are
actually displayed in print preview mode.
When you preview (run) a report with another related report
nested in it, PowerBuilder retrieves all the rows in the base report
first. Then PowerBuilder retrieves the data for all nested reports
related to the first row. Next, PowerBuilder retrieves data for nested
reports related to the second row, and so on, until all retrieval
is complete for all rows in the base report.
For information about efficiency and retrieval,
see “Supplying retrieval arguments
to relate a nested report to its base report”.
Limitations on nesting reports
For the most part you can nest the various types of report
styles. However, limitations apply to two of them.
Crosstabs
You cannot place a crosstab with retrieval arguments within another
report as a related nested report. However, you can include a crosstab in
a Composite report.
RichText reports
You cannot nest a RichText report in any way. You cannot place
a RichText report in another report, and you cannot include a RichText report
in a Composite report.