Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Actions Menu
: Enables the user to customize the report based upon the functions
you select to include.
The following functions display on the Actions pull-down menu. You need to select the ones you
want to display.
•
Select Columns
: Used to hide, unhide, and order the report columns.
•
Filter
: Used to add filters to the report.
•
Rows Per Page
: Used to display the rows per page selector. This is the selector I
prefer over the one in the search bar.
•
Sort
: Used to sort columns. As opposed to using column heading sorting, this
allows you to select multiple columns and identify if you want nulls first or last
(the default is nulls last for Ascending and first for Descending).
•
Control Break
: Used to build control breaks on report columns. This allows you to
pull columns out of the report and use them to group the rest of the data. This is
useful in conjunction with aggregate to do the sum of revenue by region.
•
Highlight
: Used to define conditions that will highlight certain cells or rows. You
decide whether to highlight rows/cells that match your criteria with a background
color and/or a special text color. This is useful to identify values outside of a given
norm such as base salary above a certain threshold.
•
Compute
: Used to add computed columns. I usually put my computed columns
within my select but this allows users to add additional ones. You can do math
(
SALARY+COMMISSION
) and even include SQL statements such as
DECODE
and
CASE
(probably not something that the average end user will understand unless you are
writing an application for a bunch of SQL programmers).
•
Aggregate
: Used to include aggregate calculations on report columns. These
include
Sum
,
Average
,
Count
, etc.
•
Chart
: Used to create a Flash chart based on the data in the report. An example of
this was discussed earlier in this chapter.
•
Group By
: Used to create a Group By view based on the data in the report. This
produces a summary report based upon the parameters chosen. For my example
Products report, I could group by Category and then calculate the Average Price.
•
Flashback
: Used to flashback the report data to some time in the past. This is only
useful if you are running your database in flashback mode and are retaining the
data (from a timeframe perspective) that a user would be interested in.
•
Save Report
: Used to save the report settings for future use. This is not displayed
for unauthenticated pages.
•
Save Public Report
: Used to save Public Report for all users to view. You must
select Save Report to enable this option. With this unchecked, users can still save
reports, but just for their own use. If you leave this enabled, any user that meets
the authorization in Save Public Report Authorization can save a report as a public
report. Leaving this enabled with No Authorization Required is probably not a
