Dynamically changing the layout of thre report-urgent please

Question

Can we change the layout of the report dynamically during runtime for example:the user should have flexibility to change the width, size , position of columns before the report is displayed & also he choose some fields not to display as per his discretion.
Mahesh

Answer 1

There are several ways of doing this, it really depends on your requirements as to which is suitable. (There are probably other ways of doing this as well).
- Try Reports XML Customizations
This is available in 6i and allows you to create a report dynamically on the fly. The template used will also allow you to change the paper size as well. The main limitation is that you are relying only on Reports defaulting to create the layout for you. The advantage is that you can store all your information to create the report in meta-data which can be driven by another tool.
- Use lexical parameters for queries and format triggers
Here, you have a fixed layout but dynamically change the query columns to the correct order. You would normally standardise on a "character" column type in order to do this. Even though the layout is fixed, you can use variable sized fields to push objects around. This can be difficult to setup.
- Use several layouts
You're reducing the options for the user, but you can have several layouts in the same report and turn them on/off. Effectively creating differing views of the same data.