Display distinct Master values when using Detail Ordering

Question

Hi People,
I need to be able to produce a report in the following form
Dept Empno
RESEARCH 7369
SALES 7499
7521
RESEARCH 7566
SALES 7654
etc etc
Its basically a Tabular report ordered on Empno BUT without repeating values of Dept when Dname doesn't change. Can anyone tell me how do achieve this?
Regards
Andy

Answer 1

Andy,
then try the following
- build a global variabe myDname via a package spec in reports:
PACKAGE Global IS
myDname varchar2(40):='DUMMY';
END;
- write a format trigger on the field dname:
function F_dnameFormatTrigger return boolean is
begin
if global.mydname = :dname then
     return (FALSE);
else
     global.mydname := :dname;
     return (TRUE);
end if;
end;
This seems to work fine. But pay attention. A format trigger fires every time reports try to format the object. So it's possible, that the trigger fires twice for the object (trigger fires when formatting at the end of the page and the reports recognizes, that for eyample the whole record doesn't fit on the page, so the record (and the field) hat to be formatted on the next page again). You must use a counter in the group (summary column with function count and reset at report) and store and compare this counter together with the dname to be sure. It's not very probable, but possible.
Hope this now helps
regards
Rainer