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From: andy.smetana@srs.gov (Andy Smetana)
Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.tools
Subject: Displaying groups in arbitrary order
Date: 8 Aug 2003 06:29:15 -0700
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I am using Reports 9i and have a query that returns the following information:
Task (varchar2), ID (num), component (varchar2), text_value (varchar2)
The data is ordered by Task, ID.

The required report layout has 1 to 4 Task groups across the page
and the number is intermixed:

      Task
        component, text_value
        .
        .

      Task
        .
        .

Task    Task    Task
  .       .       .
  .       .       .

    Task      Task
      .         .
      .         .

and so forth.

Each Task has a fixed number of records associated with it and
all of the Task names are also know so I can handle the formatting by
conditionally suppressing different report blocks based on the value(s) of Task/

The problem is the Task need to be displayed in a know but arbitrary order.
Displaying the Task in ascending order will work for many but not all Tasks.

I know of two potential ways to handle this problem:
1)  Change the query to ORDER BY DECODE ( list of 50 - 100 items)
2)  Create a report block for each Task. ie 50 to 100 report blocks

It seems like there should be an easier way to do this.  
Any suggestions?