Master-detail report

By using two "Data" bands, it is easy to create a report of the "master-detail" type. In this report, two data sources, between which there is a relation, are used. One row of the master source can correspond with several rows of the detail source. More details on relations can be found in the "Data" chapter.

It is necessary to place a band in a report in such a way that, the master band contains the detail band inside it. This can be done in the "Configure bands" window, which can be called in the "Report|Configure Bands..." menu.

Let us look at the creation of a master-detail report from a scratch. For this, we will run the report designer and create a new empty report. It already contains one "Data" band:

In order to add a detail data band, call the "Configure Bands" window. This can be done by pressing the "Configure bands..." button, shown in the figure, or by choosing the "Report|Configure Bands..." menu item. In the configurations window, the band structure is displayed:

Select the "Data" band, as shown in the figure, and right click the mouse in order to show the context menu (or press the "Add" button in the lower part of the window). In the window which will open, select "Data" band:

After this, a nested "Data" is added to the selected band. Close the window by pressing the "Close" button. You will see that the report template changes in the following way:

Nested data bands are clearly seen on band structures on the left part of the window. After this, you need to connect the band to the corresponding data source and place data columns on the bands. We will be using two data sources - Categories and Products - from the demo data base which comes with FastReport:

If we run the report, we will see the following:

In this way, you can create a master-detail report type with unlimited nested data, for example, master-detail-subdetail. Another method, which is used for the creation of master-detail report type, connected with the use of nested reports. Nested reports will be looked at in the "Subreports" section.