The Gauge Report Item in Visual C#.NET

Printer Code 128B in Visual C#.NET The Gauge Report Item

The Gauge report item, new in SSRS 2008, is a one-dimensional data region. You can display a single value in it. However, a gauge is positioned in a gauge panel, where you can add additional gauges.

After data has been assigned to a data region, you can filter, group, or sort the information that is presented to the user.

A central feature of the Tablix data region is that it lets you configure multiple groups of data. The Table report item can use row groups, and the Matrix report item can use row and column groups. The List data region has only one grouping level: the detail group. And the Chart data region always groups all data in the set. To add a group in a Tablix data region, follow these steps:

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Select the Design pane, which lets you add groups in multiple ways. If you have a table with detail data only, without any groups, you can right-click a column in the table header, and then on the Textbox shortcut menu, click Add Group. Then select either Column Group or Row Group. You can also add a group by simply dragging a grouping column to the Row Groups or Column Groups area in the Design window. If you already have some row or column groups in the Row Groups or Column Groups area, you can right-click a group and then click Add Group. In the Tablix Group window, you can define the grouping expression and add a group header and group footer. When your group is created, you can change its properties by right-clicking the group and then clicking Group Properties. In the Group Properties window, you can change general properties (including Group Name and Expression), page break options, sorting, visibility, filters, group variables, and advanced properties (including Recursive Parent and Document Map).

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In addition to using a data region with multiple grouping levels, you can also use nested data regions within other data regions. For example, you can use a List report item to group information by year and then drag another List report item onto the first List report item to group information within the Year List report item by quarter. Last, you can also drag a table element onto the Quarter List report item and configure the table with two groupings: Month and Week. The List report item is not the only data region that can be nested. You can drag report items onto table and matrix report items and create a nested data region. For example, you can add a gauge inside a matrix to display summary data graphically.

After data has been retrieved from the database, you can apply filters to the information that will be presented to the user. Filtering data is not the same as using parameters in the dataset; you will learn more about query parameters in 11. Filtering occurs after data

has been retrieved from the source, and it lets you set two or more regions to use the same dataset but show different information to the user. For example, you could have a table show 6 months of data and a graph show 12 months of data both from the same dataset. SSRS lets you use filters in many different places:

At the dataset At the data region At the row or column groups in a Tablix At the details group in a Tablix At the series or category groups in a chart Select the Report Data window. In the Report Data window, right-click the dataset you want to filter, and then select Dataset Properties. In the Dataset Properties dialog box, click the Filters tab. In the Change Filters pane, click Add. Configure the filter expression, data type, operator, and value. If your filter expression is simple, such as a single data field, the data type is assigned automatically from the field data type.

Filters at the dataset can be configured as follows:

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Filters at the dataset are very similar to parameters because they affect the data that is presented to all regions. However, filters always occur after data has been retrieved from the data source and might not perform as well as parameters because the query pulls all the data, not just the specific data that the user needs. The main advantage of filters is that information can be shared between multiple users if you configure the report to use report execution snapshots. In report execution snapshots, the first execution of the report pulls the data from the server, and successive executions use the snapshot information stored in the report server.