I have faced a problem while developing SSRS reports in AX 2012 (it is a bug of SSRS but anyway).
Short explanation
Embedding tablix (inner tablix) into another tablix (outer tablix) row leaves whitespaces if inner tablix has hidden rows and their height is 2-3 times bigger than the highest shown row.
Long explanation
Imagine you would like to have a tablix data region and for some reason you need to add another tablix in the outer tablix row. There is no problem for single tablix or if there is no inner tablix lines hidden.
Now let’s set the inner tablix rows height as shown and make 3rd row hidden. Borders of the 2nd row are dashed and the inner table border is solid, it’s for better visualization of the problem.
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Report’s data source contains 3 lines with AccountNum field value 10, 20 and 30.
As a result we get the following output:
This white space is eliminated hidden rows space < highest row height * (2 or 3).
As a result we get the following output:
No empty spaces.
First question is it a bug or a feature? (in my opinion it’s a bug)
How to avoid white spaces having tablix inside another tablix and without row resizing?
Labas! Somehow the description of your problem is written in a way that it is not that so easy to understand it. But having read the “Short explanation” section, I think I got what you mean, hopefully…
I haven’t experienced this problem myself, but here’s what I would try doing :
Resize (with mouse cursor) the details rows of both tablixes to no more than 1mm in height. Don’t worry that rows look so small in Visual Studio designer. Take a look at the standard SalesInvoice report design and pay attention to those payment slip parts in the design - you will notice that you can barely spot some of the fields, because they have made so tiny. The report runtime autoresizing should take care of increasing field heights to the necessary level.
Check the CanShrink properties for the elements in those grids. Make it so, that CanShrink is set to true.
I was thinking about this, but the drawback is that it is hard to design such report. Especially when there are tens of tablix lines and you have to expand and resize them all the time.
By the way, I found that SalesInvoice report has whitespaces too. Check the row where invoice lines are printed.
I was consulting NAV developers and they said they try to avoid this situation by not embedding tablixes but rather creating lots of groups.
Unfortunately CanShrink property does not work for this problem, I have tried it.
…yes, it’s not nice, but take a look at some Microsoft standard reports. It is obvious, that Microsoft has also been fighting with similar problems and they have sometimes sacrifiised the ease of report designing (by making those extra small tablix rows and fields) towards the correct output.
But yeah… got nothing else to add to this. So far I have somehow escaped the tablix-in-tablix structure. And having read this post, will try to escape this even more
