How can I decouple the pagination for a global region?

Question

I was having a delightful time using a common region defined on a global page when I determined that pagination setting was begin carried from one page to the next.  Arghhhh!  So for example, if I have paged to the second set (page) of rows (11-20) on Page 1 and then I go to Page 2, the second set (page) of rows (11-20) is displayed there.   If I go to a page which only has a first set of rows (1-10), I get the pagination error "Invalid set of rows requested, the source data of the report has been modified. Reset Pagination".  And when I click to reset, it just repeats the error.  [I suppose it tries to display the second set or rows (11-20) again -- which doesn't exist.  What's that saying about insanity?]  
How can I decouple the pagination for a global region? I want it to operarate just as it would if it were not sharing a common region.  So if I'm looking at rows (11-20) on page 1, I can go to any other page beginning with rows 1-10 there.  Then return to page 1 where I left off with rows 11-20 displayed.  One solution is NOT to paginate but that's not my preferred solution.
Howard

Answer 1

Howard(...inTraining) wrote:
I was having a delightful time using a common region defined on a global page when I determined that pagination setting was begin carried from one page to the next.  Arghhhh!  So for example, if I have paged to the second set (page) of rows (11-20) on Page 1 and then I go to Page 2, the second set (page) of rows (11-20) is displayed there.   If I go to a page which only has a first set of rows (1-10), I get the pagination error "Invalid set of rows requested, the source data of the report has been modified. Reset Pagination".
The fact that there are different numbers of rows returned on different pages implies that the reports have some local page dependencies, so why try to use a global component? What's the actual requirement? How many pages does the report have to appear on? (Please say it is a report and not a tabular form...)
How can I decouple the pagination for a global region? I want it to operarate just as it would if it were not sharing a common region.
The point is that a global region is just that: a single region that happens to be displayed on multiple pages. It does not create multiple instances of a region on different pages. (Specifically, a region has a single region ID, and this is used to reference it whether it appears on one page or all of them. The region ID is used by the report for the purposes of AJAX refresh, pagination etc.)
A similar situation was discussed a long time ago. I'm rather surprised that Scott regarded it as a bug: the fact that it doesn't seem to have been "fixed" or have a bug number attached may indicate that the others on the APEX team disagreed with him? I haven't tried the workaround he suggested, however I don't think it's likely to be prove a useful line of attack for your issue, as (1) it resets pagination rather than preserving it; and (2) it doesn't appear to be compatible with the AJAX PPR pagination used in more recent versions of APEX.
I can't see any straightforward "solution" (largely because I don't think there's really a problem: the exhibited behaviour is exactly how I expect/want global regions to behave). Pagination processing is undocumented. The current 4.2 apex.widget.report.paginate JS method is specifically annotated as "for internal use only". Search the forum for custom pagination techniques. Messy looking hacks for IRs have previously been suggested.
So if I'm looking at rows (11-20) on page 1, I can go to any other page beginning with rows 1-10 there.  Then return to page 1 where I left off with rows 11-20 displayed.  One solution is NOT to paginate but that's not my preferred solution.
Assuming that there aren't too many pages involved, the other obvious option is to create unique regions on the required pages. You can achieve some level of reusability by creating SQL Query (PL/SQL function body returning SQL query) reports based on an external function so that there's only a single SQL source to be maintained.
Explain the requirement in more detail. Pagination is not the only option for reducing the quantity of displayed information. Often it's better to display some of all of the data, rather than all of some of it...