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    Beta V Corporation
     
     
    SQL Reporting Services - Answers to your questions
     
    Author Thread: Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    timchandler

    Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    Posted: Thursday, January 26, 2006 9:18 PM (GST)

    Hi there,

     

    I have two reports (Report Master and Report Detail).  The Master report has four subreports, where each of the subreports source is the detail report.  Each of the subreport controls is inside a rectangle on the Master report page.  The rectangles holding the subreport are conditionally visible, based on a report parameter on the Master report (Show Grand Total, Show Store View, Show Store/Location View, Show Store/Location/Employee View, for illustration purposes).  Each subreport basically shows the same report, just for a diffeerent level (so the first one is Grand Total, the second is Store View, the third is Store/Location view, and the fourth is Store/Location/Employee view).

     

    When I execute my report in Report Manager, my page breaks disappear within Report Manager.  Essentially, I see all my subreports rendered on the same page, one after another.  When I go to Print, then select Preview, I actually can see each page individually, and if I print it off, it prints correctly.  But the view from Report Manager, and thus from my application, looks like one continuous page.  If I remove the conditional visibility, the paging displays correctly.

     

    Is there something special I need to do in order to conditionally show a subreport, but make sure that my page breaks show in the Report Manager?

     

    Thanks!

    Tim Chandler

     

    Comments:  

    Author Thread:
    timchandler
    Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    Posted: Thursday, January 26, 2006 9:19 PM (GST)
    FYI, I am working with Reporting Services 2000, SP2.
    Peter
    Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    Posted: Thursday, January 26, 2006 10:48 PM (GST)

    Tim,

     

    I wish the news here was better for you than what I'm going to give you. We have banged our heads very hard against the wall with precisely this issue on behalf of a client. Even with the RTM version of SQL RS 2005 you are going to find it perplexing to understand the inconsistencies in this area, and moreover if you wish to export to Excel expect the effects to be contrary to the effects in PDF.

     

    In short you will find that Page Breaks on conditionally visible Data Regions are mostly ignored. You'll also find that setting the hidden visibility to an expression that evaluates to true for example '=true'  will give different results to a literal of just "true". Should any of your sub-reports have no data then you'll find that the pagination again goes pear shaped.

     

    The only solutions that we have been able to progress have been to create pre-processors that create the correct RDL for the report that we want. We start from a report template deployed to the Report Server that has all the sections in it (with no conditional visibility at all), and then evaluate which sections we would like to be made visible. We pull that report definition back, knock out of the RDL the sections that we would not like to be visible, and then put the report back in the Report Server, with a slightly mangled name so that we can utilize that version again when we need a version of that report with those sections visible.

     

    If you need some contract help to resolve this kind of solution then please email me PeterB on my Boost.net email account and I'll connect you with one of my consultants to help you work through the workarounds we have.

     

    My suggestion otherwise is that you will need to raise a support call with PSS, and explain the importance of this issue being fixed properly (and consistently between renderers)  - test the excel and PDF outputs to show the effects to PSS.  also show the effects when one of your sub reports has no data.  By all means feel free to include us in your communications with PSS - as we have some open tickets in this area too.

     

    Peter

    timchandler
    Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    Posted: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 3:31 AM (GST)

    Thanks Peter, we decided we're going to  call Microsoft over the issue once we get more testing done on our current product, probably later this week or early next week.  I'll let you know what progress we make.

     

    I am also assuming that document maps and subreports don't work well together, or because of this strange conditional visibility issue?  I can get the document map to appear, but navigation to it via hyperlink just takes me nowhere.

     

    Thanks!

    Tim Chandler

    Atlanta, GA

    FRRSAdmin
    Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    Posted: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 5:34 PM (GST)

    Hi, Tim.

     

    Any news after contacting Microsoft about this issue?

     

    I'm having a similar issue where I'm trying to make two tables conditionally visible based on a textbox, (toggling visibility between the tables), and when I add the conditional visibility my page breaks do not work anymore.

     

    Thanks,

    Matthew

    Peter
    Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    Posted: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 1:10 AM (GST)

    Hello Matthew,

    You are going to find it an uphill struggle, the official word is that 'by design page breaks do not work on report items that have conditional visibility.' And therein lies many hours of frustration, and in fact even more frustration if you expect pagination to be consistent between different renderings.

    We have some in-house 'solutions' to pagination problems such as the ones you are encountering - although rather than solutions I'd call them more workarounds that are dependent upon a particularly heavy handed architectural approach to generate the RDL for reports on the fly. If you have a lot of reports that need this kind of condidtional visibility then it might be worth talking to us.


    If you only have the odd one report then you'll find that it might be best to alter the user's expectations, or rethink the design of the report.

    If you need some guidance as to how we could help you email or IM with boostsupport at hotmail.co.uk

    Peter

    FRRSAdmin
    Page Breaks, Conditional Visibility, and Subreports
    Posted: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 2:49 PM (GST)

    Peter,

     

    Thanks so much for the quick reply.  I am using this for one or two reports, so I will opt for either the expectations adjustment or redesign, (or both). 

     

    My use of the conditional visibility is to give the user the option of a different table sort, which I understand might be easier in RS 2005.  If expectations do not adjust I may need to create the alternate sort in a different report and link to it as I am using RS 2000.  Suggestions are welcome if you have any.

     

    Again, thanks for your advice and for providing this useful forum.

     

    -Matthew

     
     
     
     
     
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