>Is there a way to use the report designer itself to handle a different number of fields/columns in an alias as it comes into the report? If it comes in with 3 fields, I want to treat it differently than if it comes in with 2. I thought there were supposed to be some cool dynamic-type stuff you could do with VFP9, but I haven't been able to see much really. I might just be missing where to look though.

Dynamic features are available with SP2, but those dynamic feature might fall short to what you might have expected.
You can easily rotate labels, make dynamic coloring and that sort of things, but you can't really do report dynamically
in a sence you are describing here.

If you want to implement your own stuff for custom drawings on reports, crude concept is folowing ;
You subclass listener object, hijack 'render' method which receives parameters from reporting engine, and then from there you do custom drawings using those parameters and gdi+(x) .

Idea with listeners was not really to build custom/dynamic data reports by doing this, but rather make classes (listener subclasses)
that are equiped for doing certain types or drawings, such are graphs, custom shapes gradiant drawiings, text effects etc.
(Decorator objects) Then you can use them later in various reports.

You can also do repositioning of objects at run time which might be helpfull in this case, but all this is not exactly 'walk in a park'
Lot to read and lot to learn, before you get familiar with whole concept

Good sources to get you started and then get advanced, are articles/blogs by Cathy Pountney, Doug Hennig, Bo Durban, Cesar, Colin/Lisa S.N. etc.
(and that book Naomi sent you link for)

HTH
Sergio