Arnica WebReport (http://www.arnicasoftware.com/products/reporting-software/overview.aspx) give designers a choice of displaying dimension items within or outside the data table.
Dimension data items presentation within data table provides an integrated view of group-detail data. In many cases this is the default choice for conventional reporting purposes:
Dimension data items presentation outside of data table is advantageous when a large number of dimension items is presented and quick navigation from one group to another becomes less practical. For this purpose, Arnica WebReport provides independent (from data table) presentation of dimension items via an ajax-enabled element on report output page. Each dimension item appears as a hyperlink with optional aggregate calculation results per group (in the example below, the number in parentheses displays the number of detail records in each group). Click on the dimension item hyperlink navigates data table to the page where the group starts.
Separate control elements for dimension items page navigation helps ensure that the main data table page remains intact. In cases where dimension items list is several pages long, page browsing within this list does not affect page browsing of the main data table:
In the example above, the dimension items are displayed to the left of the data table, while settings at report design allow to quickly position the dimension output presentation at the top, on the left left, at the bottom or on the right, relative to the data table:
More over, custom report output page template manipulation allows positioning dimension items list anywhere on the page, or engage more sophisticated presentation techniques, such as displaying dimension item list only on the mouse over event. In the next screenshot, the dimension items output is displayed at the top of the data table:
Arnica WebReport also allows turning off in-data table dimension items presentation, leaving only external dimension item list:
Reports discussed in this article are available on Arnica Software demo site at the following URLs: