User`s guide

When you select records, you are basing your report only on those records that meet some conditions
that you have set. You base those conditions on the kind of information you want in the finished report.
Assume, for example, that you want a report that only shows data from California. The challenge is to
find the best way to identify those records that come from California.
• If the table used in a report has a State or Region field, you can specify in your request that the
program use only those records in which the value in the state field is equal to California (Region is
equal to CA).
• If the table does not have a State field and you still want to report only on California data, there may
be another way to identify that data.
• If the table has a Postal Code field, you could base your record selection on the range of ZIP
codes that apply to California (Postal Code is between n and N).
• If the table has an Area Code field, you could base your record selection on California Area
Codes (Area Code is one of x, y,....z).
Note:
• If the Area Code is stored in the telephone number field, you will not be able to do this same record
selection using the Select Expert based on the Area Code. You will have to create a record selection
formula using the formula language to extract the Area Code part of the phone number and then do
record selection based on that.
• As a general rule, if you can base your record selection on a number of fields (as in this example),
you should select an indexed field instead of a field that is not indexed for better performance.
7.1.3 Using the Select Expert
The Select Expert makes it easy to specify the records you want included in your report. When you
work with the Select Expert, you select the field to which you want to apply selection conditions and
then you specify those conditions.
The Select Expert can be used to set up simple record selection requests. For example:
• Customers from Arizona.
• Orders in the first quarter.
• Sales over $10,000.
The Select Expert can also be used to set up some sophisticated requests:
• Customers whose names start with "A", "M", or "S."
• Customers from California or Florida who ordered in July.
These are all range limit requests. One or more constants define the range. The program compares
the field value in each record to the constant(s) and rejects records with values outside the range. The
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Record Selection