Share via


Controlling the Tablix Data Region Display on a Report Page (Report Builder 3.0 and SSRS)

This topic describes properties for a tablix data region that you can modify to change the way a tablix data region appears when you view it in a report.

Note

You can create and modify report definitions (.rdl) in Report Builder 3.0 and in Report Designer in Business Intelligence Development Studio. Each authoring environment provides different ways to create, open, and save reports and related items. For more information, see Designing Reports in Report Designer and Report Builder 3.0 (SSRS) on the Web at microsoft.com.

Controlling the Appearance of Data

The following features help control the appearance of a tablix data region:

Controlling Tablix Data Region Position and Expansion on a Page

The following features help control the way a tablix data region displays in a rendered report:

  • Controlling the position of a tablix data region in relation to other report items. A tablix data region can be positioned above, next to, or below other report items on the report design surface. At run time, Reporting Services expands the tablix data region as needed for the data retrieved for the linked dataset, moving peer report items aside as needed. To anchor a tablix next to another report item, you must make the report items peers and adjust their relative positions. For more information, see Understanding Rendering Behaviors (Report Builder 3.0 and SSRS).

  • Changing the Expansion Direction. To control whether a tablix data region expands across the page from left-to-right (LTR) or from right-to-left (RTL), use the Direction property, which can be accessed through the Properties window. For more information, see Rendering Data Regions (Report Builder 3.0 and SSRS).

Controlling How a Tablix Data Region Renders on a Page

The following list describes ways that you can help control how a tablix data region appears in a report:

  • Controlling paging. To control the amount of data that displays on each report page, you can set page breaks on data regions. You can also set page breaks on groups. Page breaks can affect the on-demand rendering performance by reducing the amount of data that needs to be processed on each page. For more information, see Understanding Pagination in Reporting Services (Report Builder 3.0 and SSRS) and How to: Add a Page Break (Report Builder 3.0 and SSRS).

  • Displaying data on either side of row headers. You are not limited to displaying row headers on the side of a tablix data region. You can move the row headers between columns, so that columns of data appear before the row headers. To do this, modify the GroupsBeforeRowHeaders property for the matrix. You can access this property through the Properties window. The value for this property is an integer; for example, a value of 2 will display two groups instances of data region column data before displaying the column containing the row headers.

Controlling How Tablix Row and Column Groups Render

To control how a tablix data region groups render depends on the group structure. A tablix data region can have four areas, as shown in the following figure:

Tablix data region areas

The row group area and column group area contain group headers. When a tablix data region has group headers, you control how rows and columns repeat by setting properties on the General page of the Tablix Properties dialog Box.

If a tablix data region has only a tablix body area, there are no group headers. There are only static and dynamic tablix members. A static member displays once in relation to a tablix row or column group. A dynamic member repeats once for every unique group value. For example, in a tablix data region that displays a sales order, the column names in the sales order can be displayed on a static row member. Each line in the sales order is displayed on a dynamic row member.

You can help control how a tablix member renders by setting properties in the Properties pane. For more information, see "Advanced mode" in Grouping Pane (Report Builder 3.0).

The following list describes ways that you can help control how a tablix data region appears in a report:

For more information about how exporting a report to different formats affects the way a tablix data region renders on a page, see Understanding Rendering Behaviors (Report Builder 3.0 and SSRS).