Luke Hayler - SQL Server developer

If you haven’t noticed from my Twitter feed, I am a Formula 1 fan. I wasn’t always a fan but had followed it on and off for a few years – those years where a certain Ferrari driver won race after race, championship after championship, and it got a little boring. Then, in 2007, a [...]

BOL’s description of the CHOOSE() Function: “Selects and returns a value from a list or arguments”. The syntax of the function is as follows:
=CHOOSE(index, expression_1 [, expression_2] [, expression_3] [, expression_4] …[, expression_n])
So, the Choose() function uses an Index (of type Double) to ‘choose’ one of a list of supplied values/expressions. For example;
=CHOOSE(Index, “Red”, “Yellow”, [...]

Designing a report so that, when printed, is not spread across multiple pages is a matter of setting your page properties and laying out the report within the ‘page’ boundaries. Follow these simple steps to ensure that your runtime report is always just right for printing. Note – the examples below are settings for A4 [...]

Left a bit, right a bit
When it comes to designing one page summary dashboards for print (A4), you need to be able to ensure that the layout of your report is constant. Even with fluctuating columns & rows – care of Tables & Matrices. Initially this sounds fairly simple, add the report items, lay them [...]

Getting acquainted
The DateAdd() function. According to BOL this “Returns a date to which a specified time interval has been added”. The structure of the function is as follows:
DateAdd(interval, number, date)
It’s a Date!
Like most first dates, getting to grips with this function and understanding its ‘needs’ is a tricky process. Initially, you may have attempted to [...]

I can see clearly now
The visibility property of Report items can be a little gem. You can set the initial visibility of an item to hidden/visible , use another report item (a parent group in a table or matrix) and set the initial appearance of the toggle icon (+/-) either absolutely or using expressions. By using [...]

What it does
The InScope(<named-scope>) function checks to see if the current item is in the specified scope.
Example – So for the simple matrix report in Fig 1.:

The Green cells fall out-of-scope of the ColumnGroup, and In-Scope for the RowGroup
The Grey cells fall out-of-scope of the RowGroup, and In-Scope for the ColumnGroup
The Light blue [...]