Best way to have Grouping in Report(rld) completely independent of rld file.

Question

hi,
I have reports which are used by me multiple clients. Reports have parameters like Group1 which are multi-value. e.g : Group1 has firstname,lastname and fullname values. Table in report has group expression
=Fields(Parameters!Group1.Value).Value
Now client can group report by firstname,lastname or fullname. Different client wants different default value for Group1 parameter.
E.g : Client1 wants to view report grouped by firstname and client2 wants to view report grouped by Fullname. Now the problem is maintaining different rld's with different default parameters for each client. If report needs to be modified then all copy of
reports need to modified.
One possible solution is to move all grouping values into database table and fetch data(all possible group parameter values and default value for group parameter) through stored proc and bind to parameter. Data will be fetched for specific client filtered
by client name. 
I want to know is there any other solution to this problem? What should be the best approach so that one copy of rld is enough?
 Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Hi ANREV107,
Based on your description you have three kind of tables both have the field for the client name but the they have different names in DB: fistname,lastname and fullname. The report display the name column based on the paramters:group1, now the problem
is  about the parameter group1 can’t provide dynamic default values according to different clients, right?
I have tested on my local environment and we can recreate the parameter group1 to by adding an dataset which will get the dynamic column name based on the client and then specify the parameter’s default value using “Get values from a query”, then we could
maintaining different rld's with different default parameters  dynamically for each client with do modification for different client.
Details information for you reference:
1.  Create an new dataset to get the Dynamic name fields, query like below(Two method to get   the dynamic name fields, just need to replace the ‘Tablename’ to your table ):
Query 1(Three tables for three different client have the same table names):
SELECT name AS 'Group1'
FROM sys.columns AS c
WHERE (object_id = OBJECT_ID('TableName'))
and name in ('firstname','lastname','fullname')
Query2(Three tables for three different client have the three different table names):
select(
case when
'firstname' in (SELECT name AS 'ColumnName'
FROM sys.columns AS c
WHERE (object_id = OBJECT_ID('TableName1'))) THEN 'firstname'
when
'lastname' in (SELECT name AS 'ColumnName'
FROM sys.columns AS c
WHERE (object_id = OBJECT_ID('TableName2'))) THEN 'lastname'
when
'fullname' in (SELECT name AS 'ColumnName'
FROM sys.columns AS c
WHERE (object_id = OBJECT_ID('TableName3'))) THEN 'fullname'
END) as Group1
2.  Modify the parameter “Group1” and change to “Get Values from a query“:
3.  Now Using this expression to display the name will not need the change the default value anymore:
     =Fields(Parameters!Group1.Value).Value.
If you still have any question, please feel free to ask.
Regards
Vicky Liu