<p>Hello.</p>
<p>I've bumped into a seemingly difficult problem.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The report I'm creating groups customers by "customer_id". In Edit Group Details I've defined in the Sorting -tab the sorting to be done by "customer_name".</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I'd also like to suppress duplicates, which is easily done from Colum properties - Advanced - Suppress duplicates.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now, as long as customers have different names, everything is fine.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The problem arises when a following situation appears:</p>
<p>Customer_id: 1, customer_name: Smith John</p>
<p>Customer_id: 9, customer_name: Smith John</p>
<p>Customer # 9 being a different person than customer # 1.</p>
<p>OBS: Customer_id IS NOT shown in the report (I've hidden the column).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When grouping is done by customer_id, Birt gathers customer #1 rows in a group and customer #9 in another, which is as it's supposed to work.</p>
<p>MORE problems seem to arise as I have to group also by 2 other fields: service_id and serviceincredient_id..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>BUT: If I sort by customer name AND suppress duplicates, It seems that only the first name appears. Without suppressing the duplicates the name appears in every row and makes the report more difficult to follow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>What I'd like is that grouping is done by customer_id and sortin by customer_name. The first appearance of customer name would be shown on the report (duplicates suppressed) AND when the customer_id changes, the customer_name would be shown again, even if it was exactly the same as the former customer_name.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Something like this:</p>
<p>Customers: id #1 at first and id#9 as the name appears again:</p>
<p>Customer, Service</p>
<p>Smith John Cleaning</p>
<p> Meals</p>
<p> Vacuuming</p>
<p>Smith John Cleaning</p>
<p> Massage</p>
<p>In the background, customer_id would do the grouping..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Any ideas how this could be achieved?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thanks a lot, Elja</p>
