Row borders don't align when groups dropped to detail.

Hi Guys,

I am facing problems when dropping group fields to detail using the "Drop" property. I have a bunch of groupings on a table and I only want to display the group header once on the detail. But I also need to separate each printed row with a border line. I am not able to align the borders lines on the table between groups.

I have these problems while trying to draw the borders.
1. In the .rptdesign file each group and the detail is shown on different rows. I draw borders for each Group row and detail. But the report output puts spaces between each of these lines. So finally I get 4 lines between each row. They are not aligned.

2. To make matters worse, the inner group borders start from the bottom of their respective group.

I have attached my current output. Once you take a look at that then you would see the problem.

Can somebody help me?

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mwilliams

Hi AkhilV,

Can you reproduce this issue with the sample database and attach it in here so that I can see exactly how you're setting up the border lines? What is your BIRT version?

thuston

I've had the same trouble recently. There is not much you can do.
Certainly remove any Padding, and then try to modify the borders and delete empty rows until it looks as close as possible.
In your case, you may want to work with only Bottom borders.

There is an Enhancement TED filed with Actuate Engineering #32791 - BRD: Remove border when cell has 0 height
The issue is with how the current implementation generates containers and how the browser or emitter detects borders. Since there is technically something between the lines, both borders get drawn.

mwilliams

AkhilV,

If you recreate your issue with the sample database and post it in here, I'll still see if I can come up with a workaround for you.

AkhilV

Hi Guys,
I am really sorry that I couldn't reply to the posts. I have quite a lot of reports to finish and I was stuck with them.

@mwilliams: Sorry again for the late reply , I have attached a report created from the Sample Database.

AkhilV

@thuston:

I just tried out removing the padding, and also trying to draw the bottom borders instead of the top ones. I thought it was a good idea as each group row has a default padding of 1. So as the group numbers increase the inner groups will add to the padding. But I find even though the spaces between the lines have reduced, the gaps still remain.

Also, my objective is to separate each detail record with a border line from the left most end to the right most end of the report. Inexplicably BIRT refuses to draw the line below the group headers in the inner groups and details after the group header is printed.

mwilliams

Akhil,

Are you using the groupings to do any summations for the group? If not, could you just use the "suppress duplicates" option on a sorted/non-grouped table?

AkhilV

Michael,
I had explored the suppress duplicates option. But I am not sure what exactly you mean by the sorted/non-grouped table.

In the test report case, I create groups for Country and State, set the sort keys and put all data in the detail line and suppress duplicates in the table columns. But the problem with this is that when the inner group changes value the outter groups are displaying their value again. For Eg. for record Australia-NSW Australia -Queensland, "Australia" will print twice. The country should only print once for all its states

May be I am missing something?

I have attached the modified Test Report.

Thank You again for your help.

Akhil.

mwilliams

Akhil,

Take a look at the result of the second table I put in the report. I sorted the table first by Country, then by state. I then "suppressed duplicates" on the 3 left columns of the table. You'll see how your table repeats the country each time there is a new state because the country data item is listed in the detail row of the inner group.

The second table is not grouped, just sorted and uses suppressed duplicates. You would only need grouping in this case if you were going to aggregate over the group.

AkhilV

Hi Michael,

This was a really good solution.

I thought you had it when we were testing, then we realized that suppress duplicates for a column is independent of other columns. In the test report case, If the last state of Australia is Queensland and the first state of Austria is Queensland too, after sorting, Austria's Queensland will not be printed coz the previous value for the "State" column hasn't changed even when the "Country" changed.

Still working on it.

Akhil.

mwilliams

Akhil,

You can do the "suppress duplicates" manually by using the visibility feature and variables to hold the last values for the columns. This way, you can tie the visibility of the state to the country by checking that it hasn't changed as well. Hope this helps.