Microsoft® SQL Server® Reporting Services Recipes: for Designing Expert Reports

Part I. Columnar and Grouped Reports

• Green Bar Reports

• Alternate Background Shading for Table Groups

• Nested Group Green Bar Effect

• Creating Dynamic Groups

• Hiding and Showing Columns in a Table

• Horizontal Table

• Resetting the Page Number Based on Groups

GREEN BAR REPORTS

When you're dealing with large amounts of detailed information in a tabular report, it can be easy to lose track of the line you are reviewing. A common approach to enhance the readability of the report is to add a visual clue to differentiate one row from the next. This is typically accomplished by alternating the background color, or shading, of each row. Reports of this type are commonly referred to as green bar reports.

The concept of the green bar report has been around for quite some time. It originated many years ago when impact and dot-matrix printers would output line after line of data to stock, pin-fed paper that had alternating green and white stripes.

Green bar reports help you read detailed information quickly and accurately. And although those impact and dot-matrix printers are mostly a thing of the past, the need to present detailed information using the green bar style still exists with the electronic reports of today.

This recipe provides you with detailed instructions for applying the green bar effect to your Reporting Services reports.

Product Versions

• Reporting Services 2000

• Reporting Services 2005

• Reporting Services 2008

What You'll Need

• Report Builder or Business Intelligence Development Studio

• AdventureWorksDW ...