>I need help designing a very detailed report. Lots of problems here.
>
>The layout is grouped like this:
>
>Company A
> Address
> Industries
> Street Address Mailing Address
> Executive Name
> Job Functions
> Update Notes
> Seminars Attended
> Staff Contacts
> ...
>
> Executive Name
> Job Functions
> Update Notes
> Seminars Attended
> Staff Contacts
> ...
>
> Street Address Mailing Address
> Executive Name
> Job Functions
> Update Notes
> Seminars Attended
> Staff Contacts
> ...
>
>Company B
> Address
> Industries
> Street Address Mailing Address
>
>Problems:
> - Address is multi-line and could be 2-5 lines.
> - Industries, Job Functions, Update Notes, etc... are in seperate tables and there could be any number of each.
> - If the page detail is from Update Notes on down then there doesn't seem to be a way to have it print all the update notes, then all the seminars. At best I can show all four then the next four.
>
>Whatever solution I come up with has to be portable to a client server environment.
>
>To this point I've accomplished the formatting by using UDF's that are called from a select statement on VFP tables. The UDF's format the data into one long string that I just drop on the report. It looks great except the UDF's slow it down incredibly and they have a limit of 254 characters.
>
>So! Any suggestions? Am I using the wrong report writer? What other report writers are there that can handle VFP tables now and SQL server data later? Are UDF's a good idea? Is there a way to force select...sql query to return a memo field that isn't already in the table you're querying?
>
>Thanks in advance!
>
>paul
Sounds like Crystal Reports can help you out here. Each section can be an embedded subreport.
Craig Berntson
MCSD, Microsoft .Net MVP, Grape City Community Influencer