Community
Participate
Working Groups
In current DataSet editor, user can config filters for the dataSet. So all report elements using this dataSet will inherit this setting. This is very convenient and useful. But there is no way to set the sorting/grouping options at the same time. Though some report element has its own dataSet configuration UI at an Element level(like List, Table), some may not(like Data, Chart). So sometimes this makes it difficult to construct a desired resultSet. For JDBC users, they can still achieve this by editing the SQL statement, but for FlatFile/XML users, they can't. So expected the sorting/grouping options can also be added to the dataSet editor UI to raise the usability.
Please see whether this needs to be supported.
Adding grouping to data set breaks the BIRT data model. A BIRT data set is meant to return a tabular result set, while groups are a report-level concept which applies to table, list and chart. (I can't figure out why someone would need grouping in a Data Item). While sorting can be associated with a data set it is more useful to have this specified on the report item which uses the data set. If any report item which uses a data set does not support a sort order specification and there is a use case for it, it should be added to the report item.
I dont' agree sorting should only be specified in the report-item-level though I agree grouping is a report-level concept here(This is because BRIT grouping is quite different with the SQL grouping concept which still produces a tabular data). As I think, sorting should just like filtering. Using the sorting defined in the data-set level could: 1. facilitate eazy configuration. User can just set once in the dataset, and use in every report item bound with it. This is especially useful for FlatFile/Xml users, since they can't reach this without modifying the source data if they dont' want to define this one-by-one. 2. increase performance(?). You dont' have to process each report item for the same settings again and again. The dataset is alreay ready or even cached. Though we can cache every instance for each report item, that consumes more memory. So being able to define sorting both in dataset-level and report-level leaves the most flexibility to users. And we already did this for filtering, why not sorting?
Updated bug title to reflect result of discussion. Agreed that a sort setting on data set can be useful in certain cases. However there is currently no business use case that will require this feature. Moving this enhancement to future release.
