We will introduce Data display mode of FineReport reporting software in this article.Before making a report template, it is necessary to prepare basic data required for the report.

1. Overview

In the client browser, report effect is viewed through processing of basic data. Before making a report template, it is necessary to prepare basic data required for the report. Basic data comes from sources varying from database tables, views, storage process, to other text files like Excel. Refer to data set for details.

Despite the sources or preprocessing of data, they finally return to one or more two-dimensional table(s) as shown below:

With those basic data, the data can be re-processed to display the desired style.

Data are displayed in three modes, which are: List, grouping and summary, as shown below:

2. List

As shown above, the report made display exactly the same data as the basic table, meaning all records in the basic table, redundant or not, are displayed unchanged. This is a list-like schedule. The setting mode in the designer is shown as below:

3. Grouping

Ordinary grouping and adjacent continuous grouping. Here are different scenarios in which the two are used.

3.1 Ordinary grouping

As shown above, the mode in which duplicates in a data column are combined into one group is called display by groups.

The setting mode in the designer is shown as below:

A data column set as Grouping is indicated as “G”, meaning group.

3.2 Adjacent continuous grouping

The mode in which only adjacent same data are combined is called adjacent continuous grouping.

The setting mode in the designer is shown as below:

Advantages of this grouping mode are: It is generally a kind of grouping realized by matching the ordered column in SQL. Grouping realized in this way is superior in performance to ordinary grouping to address the problem of slow grouping. For the specific adjacent continuous grouping function used to improve report performance optimization, refer to the section of improvement of report performance by skillful use of adjacent continuous grouping.

4. Summary

For value-type fields in a report, their aggregation modes can be set as below: The field of Sales Volume can be totaled based on Region and Sales Staff; or average, maximum, minimum sales volume and number of all products can be calculated for some Sales Staff in some Region. These are data summary.

The setting mode in the designer for summary of Sales Volume is shown as below: