About summary columns About formula columns About placeholder columns

Advanced Concepts 2-15 Using external style sheets for HTMLCSS output Every corporate Web site today uses style sheets to enforce the corporate look-and-feel across Web pages. External style sheets are Cascading Style Sheet CSS files that are referenced by these Web pages. End users typically want the same style used in pages on their Web site applied to their Web reports. In prior releases, applying style sheets and user-defined styles to reports involved manually editing the HTMLCSS output. You can specify user-defined styles and style sheets for HTMLCSS output using Oracle Reports Builder. Styles can be applied to report, field, text, frame, and repeating frame objects using the new properties Style Sheets, CSS Class Name, and CSS ID properties see the Oracle Reports online Help for descriptions of these properties. The generated HTMLCSS output includes links to the style sheets and the user-defined styles are applied to the objects. Restrictions The following elements are not supported by HTML style sheet extensions: ■ ellipses, arcs, polygonspolylines, and diagonal lines ■ rounded rectangles formatted as rectangles ■ arrows on lines ■ dashes on lines or borders of objects See also Section 4.7.16.4, Displaying report output in your Web browser Section 4.7.17.3, Printing a report from your Web browser

2.3 Data Model Objects

The topics in this section build on the basic concepts discussed in Section 1.7, Data Model Objects . ■ About summary columns ■ About formula columns ■ About placeholder columns ■ About referencing columns and parameters ■ About non-linkable queries ■ About links versus groups ■ About matrix objects

2.3.1 About summary columns

A summary column performs a computation on another columns data. Using the Report Wizard or Data Wizard, you can create the following summaries: sum, average, count, minimum, maximum, total. You can also create a summary column manually in the Data Model view, and use the Property Inspector to create the following additional summaries: first, last, standard deviation, variance. If your report requires a customized computation, for example, one that computes sales tax, create a formula column see Section 4.8.10, Creating or editing a formula column . 2-16 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports See also Section 4.8.11, Creating a summary column

2.3.2 About formula columns

A formula column performs a user-defined computation on the data of one or more columns, including placeholder columns. For example, :ITEMTOT .07 is a formula that performs a computation on one column, while :SAL + :COMM performs a computation using two columns in a record. You create formulas in PLSQL using the PLSQL Editor. See also Section 4.8.10, Creating or editing a formula column Section 2.6.8, About formulas

2.3.3 About placeholder columns

A placeholder is a column for which you set the datatype and value in PLSQL that you define. Placeholder columns are useful when you want to selectively set the value of a column for example, each time the nth record is fetched, or each time a record containing a specific value is fetched, and so on. You can set the value of a placeholder column in the following places: ■ the Before Report trigger, if the placeholder is a report-level column ■ a report-level formula column, if the placeholder is a report-level column ■ a formula in the placeholders group or a group below it the value is set once for each record of the group See also Section 4.8.12, Creating or editing a placeholder column Section 2.6.8, About formulas

2.3.4 About referencing columns and parameters