Re: Displaying groups in arbitrary order

Andy Smetana wrote:
> 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.
<snip>
> 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?

You could also create a table that has TASK (varchar2) and ORDER_NUM (num) then join it in and order by the ORDER_NUM. This has the advantages of being more easily maintainable and sharable across multiple reports.

Richard Received on Mon Aug 11 2003 - 20:16:30 CEST