Understanding Grouping in SQL Reporting Services 2005 Reports

Question

I have a Page Header, Body and Page Footer section, but I can't figure out how to add additional 'group' sections to a SQL Reporting Services report design (rdl) in Visual Studio 2005.

Take this example: I have a dataset SELECT Department, Employee Salary FROM Employees ORDER BY Department, Employee. I want to make a report showing each employee's salary along with department and company wide totals.

In similar report designers I would do this by defining a grouping in the report on the Department field. I would then have a Department Header section to drop a textbox for the department field, a Detail section to drop textboxes for the Employee and Salary fields, a Department Footer section to drop an textbox for the aggregate sum of the departments salary, and finally a (Report) Footer section to drop a textbox for the aggregate sum of all employees salary.

I have found the Table control in the toolbox - I can create "rows" which match the section definitions I mentioned above, but the table control wants everything to tightly follow it's rows and columns - I cannot freely drop a textbox in a section, it must exactly size itself to fit one cell in the table. This may be great for some situations, but not mine.

Is the Table control the only/correct way to do grouping here, or is there a way to expand beyond the Page Header/Body/Page Footer sections?

Answer 1

It seems this can be done with the List control.

First place a List item in the report body. Assigned the DataSetName and then assign the Grouping value (in the example 'Department').

Then place a second List item inside the first - it must be dropped as a child item, not overlapping. Same dataset, but no grouping.

Everything that is placed in the parent list above the child list appears as a header, while everything placed below appears as a footer.