SEQUEL ViewPoint provides grid control features that let you format your view results. You can:

• Choose contrasting colors for even/odd result rows
• Format different aspects of your results (such as headings, rows, and selection area) distinctively, including font attributes (style, size, weight, and color) and foreground/background colors.
• Use conditional formatting to highlight exceptions
• Use the Fast Group-and-Sum function for non-summarized data

Let’s look at how you might use some of these capabilities. Two sample order files, ORDHEAD and ORDLINE, are shipped with SEQUEL. Using these files, you can create a very simple SEQUEL view with the following statement:

SELECT cusno.1, ordno.1, prdno.2, quano.2, actsp.2, quano*actsp NAME(extprc)
COLHDG(”Extended” “Price”)
FROM sequelex/ordhead,sequelex/ordline
INNER JOIN ordno.1=ordno.2
ORDER BY cusno

Then, you can use ViewPoint to format the results. In this example, we grouped the results for each customer number, even though the statements creating the view do not contain any group or sum syntax.

Set user/desktop defaults
You can set default grid formatting at the user/desktop level, or you can apply formatting to a view. To apply formatting to a view, you must define the formatting during a ViewPoint Design View session. ViewPoint saves the formatting as part of the view definition. View formatting overrides the defaults set at the user/desktop level (for that view only).

Format view results
Here’s how you format view results:

1. Open an existing view in a ViewPoint Design View session. If you are creating a new view, do a Save or Save As operation first. Display your results.

2. In the results window, select the Format > Layout option to continue.

3. Open the Layout Format window. Select the General tab to specify whether you want to have alternating colors for even/odd rows and your color selections. Use the grid line drop-down menu to select a grid line format from the selection list.

4. Select the Grouping tab to specify whether you want to enable the automated grouping function. If this option is checked, the results may be grouped as shown in the first example. To use this feature, you simply drag-and-drop a column heading (such as Customer Number) to the top margin of the results window and SEQUEL groups the data by that value.

5. Use the Style Editor tab to pick one of the styles (sections) in the results and specify formatting.

6. If you are using a Design View session, SEQUEL enables the Column Editor tab. Use this tab to specify conditional highlighting for special occurrences of data in the view results. For example, we could highlight a value like a low inventory level. When this value occurs, the amount shows up in red. Use this feature when you are creating a SEQUEL dashboard with key performance indicators.

7. Finally, use the Printing Options tab to apply print settings when sending the results to a network printer.

See SEQUEL ViewPoint’s help text for additional examples and information about grid control options.

Contributed by Steven Smith, Technical Writer

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 11:25 am and is filed under SEQUEL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.