Printing dollar totals for a group of database information is very common in financial reports (i.e. What are the total dollar sales for all customers in a state?). The concepts described in the previous tutorial page are practically the same, with some slight changes to achieve the desired result:

 

¡        Create the Sorting Band on the desired database field (in this case, the STATE database field)
¡        Create a Group Footer band on this same database field
¡        Create a new frame inside the Group Footer band
¡        Click the Dictionary button for this newly added Frame
¡        Click the '+' button at the top of the Dictionary dialogue box
¡        Create a new variable to contain the dollar total value based on the database field containing the dollar sales (for this example it is the database field NAM:Sales):

 

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* NOTE *

 Remember that the variable LOC:StateTotal will be containing the SUM of the NAM:Sales database field! This means that the variable will most likely be larger (potentially MUCH larger) than the largest database entry; when assigning the Picture for the variable MAKE SURE you increase it's length to accomodate this situation. Otherwise your data contained in the variable may be incorrect due to truncation!

  * NOTE *

 

 After saving the new variable information your Dictionary screen will be updated:

 

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And here is the Report Formatter screen:

 

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 And some sample output:

 

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 Naturally the database field for sales for each customer could be added to the Detail report band; one could also change the Picture for the "Total Sales" to include a leading dollar sign symbol. In fact, let's also add some lines to this report band to really spruce it up:

 

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 As shown above, the Sales information for each database record was added. Also added were a top border for the first frame (Total Records For The State) and a bottom border for the second frame (Total Sales For The State) located inside the Group Footer report band.

 

To recap: on this page you learned:

¡        How to create a new variable for a Group Header / Group Footer report band
¡        How to use this variable to store numeric information (such as sales information)
¡        How to combine this variable with text to print attractive and meaningful report information

 

GOTO PAGE 18

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