Presenting information in a particular order is required in many reports. It is also common to produce the same report using a variety of different sorts or groups. This section describes how to sort and group information for your reports. Sorting and grouping is done on the Sort and Group Results tab of the Workbench window.
Note: Sorting for a Cross-Tab Request is done on the Select Data Items tab. The Sort and Group Results tab is unavailable.
Sorting data means to organize detail lines in a specific order. The lines can be organized in ascending or descending order.
Grouping data means to organize a set of related detail lines into its own section of the report. You specify a data item upon which the detail lines are grouped. When a change is encountered in this data item’s value, the current group is ended and a new group is started (this is called a group break).
For example, suppose you want to sort records by Cars Make and then within Cars Make sort by Cars Model showing subtotals for each Cars Make. You need to create a group break on Cars Make. Whenever the value for Cars Make changes, the Request will skip a line, print a total for that group, skip another line, and print a group heading for the new group.
You specify sorting and grouping in the same area of the Workbench.