Complex Master-Detail Report

One of the most interesting things about our reporting suite is the object model. Everything in a report is an XRControl, the report, the bands, and even the controls! Because of this, reports can be as simple or as complex as you wish since each control can also contain a list of XRControls! Whenever using the reporting system, there is a Report Explorer which visually depicts the current hierarchy of your report making it easier to keep track of this complex model (see left). Because of this particular capability, there are a myriad of reports that can be created. A customer sent an email and asked about a specific type of report: Master Detail. Their particular use case was a bit different however. We are often used to a master detail hierarchy like this: - Master          - Detail          - Detail - Master          - Detail and so on…

What if we had something like this:

where the hierarchy is a bit more complex? In this case, each user has potentially 3 detail tables: Items they own, items the created, and assigned tasks. Since each report can contain an infinite (memory limited) amount of child XRControl’s, and each band (since it is also an XRControl) can also have as many children as needed, this scenario is simple to do.

In an effort to make this transparent, you can view the video:

Or alternatively, you can download the sample and run it on your machine. Just take a look at sample E20018.

As always, if there are any comments and/or questions, feel free to get a hold of me!

Seth Juarez
Email: sethj@devexpress.com
Twitter: @SethJuarez

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