BIRT Exchange Forum: BIRT Exchange Forum -> Last Week in the Forums: Hiding a Column Based on its Name, Conditional Images, and more...

This blog series takes a look back at the past week in the forums, recalling how active they were and highlights some of the questions asked that seem to frequent the forums or other interesting topics. The forum traffic is still down a little as the last few weeks to go on vacation before the kids go back to school. Still, many great questions and answers are being posted every day. As always, thanks to those users who help answer questions! It is a great help to the community!

The first topic for this week is how to hide a column based on the column name. The poster wanted to be able to hide a column in a table based on the column's name. In the thread, example scripts to use in the onCreate and in the visibility expression are provided to achieve this.

The second topic I'll cover is showing a different image for a row based on a condition. The poster wanted to know how to change images based on their data. For certain values they wanted a green light, for others a yellow, and for others a red light. The simple solution provided was to place all 3 images in the cell where you want to display the image and just hide the ones you don't need based on your data.

The last topic for this week is excluding weekend days in your query. The poster wanted to be able to query their database for only weekdays, but didn't know how to exclude the weekend days. A solution is given for an Oracle query that gives a general idea of the setup of the SQL that would be needed for all database types.

SELECT EMPLOYEE, COUNT(NUMBERCALLED) AS TOTAL_CALLED
FROM SDDTA.PHONEREPORT
WHERE ( MANAGERNAME = 'X' 
     OR MANAGERNAME = 'Y' )
  AND (TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, 'D') IN ('6', '7')
      AND DATE = CURRENT_DATE - (TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, 'D') -5)
      OR DATE - 1)

Again, this is just a small sample of what went through the forums this past week. For more questions and answers that have been posted, check out the forums. As always, if you have a question, feel free to ask it, and if you see a question you know the answer to or have a similar experience to, feel free to post an answer or comment.