Sorting a Report by Comments

[Chris Kelleher]

Dear Peg People,

I'm writing a report that will display basic info for a CO (easy part) but
it needs to be sorted by the text in the Comments field (hard part - for me,
at least.) The Comments field will contain special codes for our warehouse
personnel. Is it possible to sort a list by the Text in the Comment field?
Sofar I haven't been able to find a way to do it in the Progress manuals.

TIA,
Nick P.
nicholas@ix.netcom.com

 

[Chris Kelleher]

These codes will be stored in the notes.txt field, which are related to the
co by the key field. Your best bet would be a temp-table that you could
sort.

Carol Choate
Consultant
Progress DBA/Programmer
Peg Member #1998062202

 

[Chris Kelleher]

You can have a progress report sort by any field in a database by using the
BY keyword. For example:

For each co by co.any-field-you-want:

Note that if the field you select is not indexed, the report can be
PAINFULLY slow to run.

I am not sure what you mean by "comments" field. If you mean to co-text,
that would not be a good way to go. The CO text (and Item text, and all
the other text) is held in a separate table (notes) and link to the order
via a text key (co.key). To sort on this, you would need to scan through
the notes file for a hit, then scan through the CO file for a matching key
index. I would recommend using the user defined fields to hold your
special code. If you can, use charfld1, as it is indexed and will greatly
speed your report.


Good Luck!

 

[Chris Kelleher]

what's the difference between 'by' and 'break by'?

darrin

 

[Chris Kelleher]

BREAK BY is used to do work on intermediate values within a FOR EACH loop.
for example:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana">code:</font><HR><pre>
/*Print salesperson totals with sub-totals by sales manager*/

For each slsman BREAK BY slsman.slsmangr by slsman.salesman:

Display slsman.slsman
slsman.sales-ytd (TOTAL BY slsmangr).

End.

[/code]

If you simply wanted a list sorted by salesperson, the BY
slsman.slsman would be sufficient.

 

[Chris Kelleher]

Well, close. Break by creates a break group, creating
groups within the sort order, so you can use functions
such as first-of, first, last-of, and last, as well
as any sub-totals,etc.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana">code:</font><HR><pre>

for each co no-lock
break by co.slsman:

if first-of (co.slsman) then
do:
find slsman of co no-lock.
display
co.slsman
slsman.slsmangr.
end.
find custaddr of co no-lock no-error.
display
co.cust-num
co.cust-seq
custaddr.name when available custaddr
co.price with stream-io width 132.
accumulate
co.price (total by co.slsman).
if last-of(co.slsman) then
do:
underline co.price.
down 1.
display
accum total by co.slsman co.price @ co.price.
down 1.
end.

end.

[/code]

Patrick T. Gordon
Senior Software Engineer
Software Services
Symix Computer Systems, Inc.
Columbus, OH 43231
Phone: 614/523-7000
Fax: 614/895-1195