Changing region source SQL based on condition

Question

I have a reports region which displays the results from some SQL. Depending on the value of a page variable I need to run a different bit of SQL to get my results. At the moment I'm using 5 different regions and displaying the appropriate one and hiding the others, depending on the value of the page variable.
It's a bit messy and I'm looking for a better way to do it. Is it possible to use a single region and change the SQL used as the region source after checking my page variable? e.g. something like this for the region source:
IF :report_type = 1 THEN
SELECT col1, col2, col3 from table1;
ELSEIF :report_type = 2 THEN
SELECT col1, col2, col3 from table2;
ELSEIF :report_type = 2 THEN
SELECT col1, col2, col3 from table3;
END IF;..or something similar?
Or is there an even easier way of doing this?

Answer 1

Hello,
Actually, as long as you're willing to live with some limitations, you can indeed do that with an interactive report.
A while ago, I blogged about using pipelined functions with respective to generic charting -
http://jes.blogs.shellprompt.net/2006/05/25/generic-charting-in-application-express/
Using the same technique you can create a pipelined function which returns each of your different resultsets.
The key limitation is of course that you need to return the same columns each time (in your example you are always returning 3 columns, it is just the table name that changes, so perhaps it might still be an acceptable solution to you).
John.
Blog: http://jes.blogs.shellprompt.net
Work: http://www.apex-evangelists.com
Author of Pro Application Express: http://tinyurl.com/3gu7cd
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