Create a Formatted report for a single record

Question

I am trying to create a report for a single record in a document format instead of row and column format
For example to list a custome information with list of orders.
CustomerID ---------------------        Name ------------------------------------
Address 1 ----------------------         Address 2 ------------------------------
City --------------------------------        State -------------------------------------
Zip ---------------------------------
Order List
Order 1            Qty          Total Cost
Order 2            Qty          Total Cost
We dont have crystal reports setup yet.  I am trying to use report designer...but it is not allowing me to do it.  It creates different group for each row in the query.   Can any one suggest how to do it using report designer or another way in BI 7.0 to create this kind of document.   I want to be able to print this document as pdf or other types.
Any help is greatly appreciated..
Thanks

Answer 1

you can do this both in a formatted report or bex, depending on what kind of an outcome that you are looking for.
basically, you are first going to present the data in a tabular format and then move the cells around, so the next time you execute the report (analyzer or report designer) it will stay in that format.
if you are doing it in report designer, first create a query that pulls all required data points and gives them to you in an output as a table.  Then, add that query as a data provider for the formatted report, and you can create additional cells and move the key figures around.  Report designer is a little crude for formatting, but it works
if you are doing this in BEx Analyzer, then you can do the same thing: create a query and then use the BExGetData formula to pull the required data into required cells
if you are looking for HIGHLY formatted report (for example you want the output to come out on forms, etc), then you would need to use the Crystal Reports.
Regardless of what you use for the presentation of the data, the data generation is controlled by the Query itself.  This is one of the tools that SAP is not planning to take away: all the future presentation options will use the query as the data source.
good luck