Resource intensive format trigger

Question

Hi,
I am using the folwoing format trig on a repeating fram in reports 2.5:
numRows number(10);
begin
select count(ID) into numRows
from <your table>
where address = :address;
if (numRows > 1) then
srw.attr.mask := srw.FFCOLOR_ATTR + srw.FILLPATT_ATTR;
srw.attr.ffcolor := 'r75g75b0';
srw.attr.fillpatt := 'solid';
srw.set_attr(0, srw.attr);
end if;
end;
=================
The problem is it takes too long to run (the table holds 6500 recs.) If I was to change the formatted records to a simple underline, do you think that i cuold achieve a faster running report. At the moment it highlights selected records with a "bar".
thanx,
n.

Answer 1

Nicholas,
I think your problem is going to be more that you have a select at all in the format trigger. That's still a trip to the db and back everytime that object is formatted. I presume you're highlighting duplicate rows? I don't know your data model, but is it possible to do something like create a break group on your address and count the number of details, even if it's some kind of dummy detail? The format trigger could run off of the count. You could still display the address in the same repeating frame as the columns that would make up its details since it's at a lower frequency. You would have an extra repeating frame, but that's less overhead than an additional select executed for each instance of the repeating frame. If you can accomplish this in the data model, I think you'll find it runs faster than if you added an index.
Just my 2 cents!
Toby