Workaround: Gap with Multiple Data Groups

In November, 2007, I reported a bug in the VFP 9 Report Writer that related to data groups (Bug 312572). This isn't the major data grouping bug that everyone's been talking about, but rather a smaller one I stumbled on while doing all my testing. It has to do with a strange gap of whitespace appearing on the report under certain circumstances as shown in the following:



After getting some insight from a developer at Microsoft, I was able to understand what was going on behind the scenes. That knowledge helped me figure out a workaround for this issue.

The report has three data groups. The first data group breaks on an expression of: .T. The second data group breaks on a field in the data: GrpField. The third group is used to print some whitespace every 5 detail records. Its expression is: INT(rnLine / 5). The report also has a variable defined to help count the number of detail lines: Name = rnLine, Value to store = 0, Initial Value = 0, Reset value = GrpField, Calculation = Count.

The problem is that the third data group uses the rnLine report variable which is reset on the second data group. As the second data resets, it alters the value of the report variable, which messes with the data grouping and completely confuses the Report Writer.

The solution is to alter the report variable in a slightly different way so it doesn't confuse the data grouping. Only two slight changes are required, but the changes are enough to make the Report Writer happy. First, change the definition of the report variable to reset at the end of the report instead of the second data group.

The second change is to add the following to the On Entry Expression in the Data Group Header of the second Data Group: _VFP.SetVar('rnLine', rnLine - MOD(rnLine,5)). This change manipulates the report variable by reducing the value back to the last number that triggered a break. It's a sneaky workaround that's pretty effective as shown in the following example that doesn't have the gap:



As with most of the Visual FoxPro Report Writer, a little creative thinking can go a long way!