It can sometimes be important to understand the distinction that ExtraView makes between rows on a report and records on a report. This difference in semantics is used to distinguish between the times when ExtraView returns a precise number of records on a report and when it returns a set of rows that may or may not correspond exactly to the number of records. The difference comes when a query may return a single record multiple times on a report, or count the same record multiple times on the same report. This happens when there are one-to-many relationships within your data and with repeating rows on reports. The two most common times this happens are:

Reporting with Repeating Record Fields

  • You prepare a report that uses repeating row records, then use a repeating row field to sort the report. When you use a field on a repeating row record to sort, it will generate a row on the report for each occurrence of the repeating row. Therefore, if you have 3 repeating rows within a single issue, it will generate 3 rows on the report for each record.
  • You use reporting hierarchies. In a similar manner to the above bullet, one record at a level in the hierarchy may have multiple child records, and when you sort by a field at the child level, you will generate one row on the report for each record.
  • If you create a report and want to place any fields from the Release field on the report, you must always include the RELEASE_FOUND field on the report, as this is the key field used to extract the remaining fields from the ExtraView database.

Reports that Include Repeating Row Fields from Different Repeating Row Layout Types

When you have reports that include fields from two or more repeating row types, it can be confusing to view the results from the different layout types aligned on the same row of the report, as the data from any one repeating row record is unlikely to be related to the data from any other repeating row record.  Care should be taken when interpreting the data displayed on a report which contains data from multiple repeating row layouts.