Be it cross-tab or any other type of data arrangement on report, it is very important to see to it that you get the right data on cross-tab.
Bound cross-tab or unbound cross-tab
When you issue a command to place cross-tab component on a report, a dialog box opens up asking whether you want to have a bound cross-tab or an unbound cross-tab.
Figure 2: Cross-tab – bound or unbound
A cross-tab is known as bound cross-tab when it uses the same SQL that was used for the report. When a cross-tab uses its own SQL to get the data, it is known as an unbound cross-tab.
When to use Bound cross-tab
Following are some of the cases when you may prefer to go for a bound cross-tab:
- A report has only one component – cross-tab.
- A report has cross-tab as well as other components and it uses the same data for all the components on the report.
When to use Unbound cross-tab
You may prefer to go for unbound cross-tab, when: Two different set of data is used for cross-tab and for the main report.
Report has more than one cross-tab showing different set of data.
Getting data for an unbound cross-tab
When an unbound cross-tab is used, you have two alternatives to get data for your cross-tab:
- Use pre-set query object.
- Set a Connection Name, Specify SQL Query and verify the SQL.
Figure 3: Get the right data for your cross-tab
A person using the ID having Intellicus’ Administrator privileges creates query objects. Query objects are created using Intellicus Portal. A query object gets embedded in cross-tab.
If you do not prefer to use query objects, you can select a Connection Name and specify an SQL.
You need to verify the SQL in any case.
What an SQL should provide
SQL provides fields (at design time) and record-set (at runtime) to the cross-tab. The record-set that will come from Database Server will depend solely on the SQL provided.
A wrongly written SQL will not be able to fetch the right fields and so it would not be possible to get the right results from the cross-tab.
Important: In case of bound cross-tabs, cross-tab is created depending on the section where cross-tab component is placed. This is because the data made available for cross-tab depends on data source used for report. In case of unbound cross-tabs, this is not the case. In whichever section you place the cross-tab, entire record-set received, will be considered for creating the cross-tab. This is because the data made available for chart comes from its own data source.