Hyper File View,Memory Zone or?

I am just starting to learn how to do reports in WD. I need to present my clients with report data selections: Gender,School,Class,Program,Age,etc. Depending on what they select, I will need to get the records and sort them before I call the report. In my old design tool, I would use sets (union, intersection, etc.). What is the best way to do this in WD? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hi Paul,

You can do all of this with Queries. You construct a query to join tables on common keys and also include any filters. Queries are fast and flexible and can be fed from user entered parameters.

Milton

Milton,

My clients will need to be able to select from 1 to say 30 different classes or other criteria. They may select 12 classes out of 30. How could I handle this with a Query?

Thanks,
Paul

Hello Paul,

Parameters which get the value 'Null' are ignored by the query.

HTH.

Hi Paul,

In case of different sorts and selections I would prefer using a report based on a memory zone. No parameters to pass to the report, just the memory zone. You control selection and sorting completely from programming.
This is a personal preference, I'm not a query wizzard, so if it get's complicated I always resort to Wlanguage coding. For the easy stuff I use queries.

Regards,
Piet

Thanks for all the replies. I see I can use a Query with parameters (Nulls when needed) for most of my needs. However, I will need to be able to do the following. Allow the user to select any number of names from a File Item and then I would include them in a report. Example: They select 10 different school names from a possible 20 (these numbers could be different each time).

The possiblities that I see are:

1. Create a loop for the school names selected and do a query for each school name, create Hyper File View for each query, merge the views, do a sort on the resulting view. As I read the Help, the sort of the view would not initially be an indexed sort. Is that correct?

2. Create a loop for the school names selected and do a query for each school name and add the records one by one to a Memory Zone using MemAdd. Sort the zone.

Feedback on these two possibilities is appreaciated. Also, if there is a more efficient way to accomplish this please let me know.

Thanks,
Paul

I don’t know all your problems but with the described one query is the right solution (in my humble opinion) .
In the query definition, in the school code field put one condition using the “In the list” and “supplied by parameter” and before the hexecutequery put all the school codes you want in the parameter or "null" if you want all the schools.
Look in the help for hexecutequery and read the “Notes” carefully.

Paulo,

Thanks for the info. The In the List work great. I did not know I had that option. My old tool did not have anywhere near as many options for Queries. I more question. I am having a problem passing a null value as a variable to the Query. It works fine if I type in Null, for the paramater that I want ignored, but I need to pass it as a variable. My code is below

sSchool is string = Null

HExecuteQuery(QRY_SchoolNameTest,hQueryDefault,sSchool,"Smith")
iPreview(i100, "Pint preview", True)
iPrintReport(RPT_SchoolNameTest)

Thanks,
Paul

Paul, by default query-parameters are already NULL. So rewrite it as:

IF sSchool <> "" THEN
QRY_SchoolNameTest.ParamSchool = sSchool
END
IF sName <> "" THEN
QRY_SchoolNameTest.ParamName = sName
END
HExecuteQuery(QRY_SchoolNameTest)
iPreview(i100, "Pint preview", True)
iPrintReport(RPT_SchoolNameTest)

Arie

Arie,

Thanks. This helps a lot. Thanks to everyone to gave advice.

Paul

Hi Paul

try to use variant

sSchool is variant = Null

HExecuteQuery(QRY_SchoolNameTest,hQueryDefault,sSchool,"Smith")
iPreview(i100, "Pint preview", True)
iPrintReport(RPT_SchoolNameTest)

HTH

HTH ,

sSchool is variant = Null worked.

Thanks for the info. The more I use WD the more I am impressed with it scope.

Paul