Verification
Preview the Report to Ascertain that It Meets Business Requirements
Let's preview the report as it currently stands, to ensure that we have met the expressed business requirements of the information consumers.
1. Click the Preview tab, atop the design environment.
The report executes, and appears as depicted in Illustration 34.
We see the effects of our handiwork. As we noted earlier, the conditional formatting of the Store_Profit value has the intended presentation effect. Moreover, we note that the Drink and Food families are presented in a "drilled down" state by default, while the Non-Consumable family is presented with a default of "rolled up," with regard to drill down attributes. We find, too, that we can conduct drill down of the Non-Consumable family on an ad hoc basis, should the need arise, adding value to the report though the provision of capabilities to meet needs that the information consumers may not have foreseen at the time they communicated their initial specifications for the report to us.
2. Select File --> Save All to save all work to this point.
3. Select File --> Exit when ready to leave the Reporting Services development environment.
Conclusion ...
In this article, we extended our exploration of conditional formatting within Reporting Services to address a common need within the reporting environment, the requirement to present one of multiple possible formats, based upon the value of a given report measure. To introduce an approach to meeting such a requirement, we discussed briefly the SWITCH() function, and then embarked upon a practice example within which we address the presentation needs of a hypothetical group of information consumers.
After preparing for our practice session by creating a project within Reporting Services, and by creating a "clone" report (based upon an existing sample OLAP report to save time), we presented a technique for formatting negative values (as enclosed within parentheses, using red characters to draw attention) using a combination of properties settings and expressions, including the SWITCH() function. We then presented an approach for conditionally controlling the presentation of the default drilldown state of a given line item within a matrix report region. Finally, we reviewed the report in Report Designer, to verify the operation of the calculations that formed the scope of our practice exercise.
» See All Articles by Columnist William E. Pearson, III
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