Navigating Sort Groups From a Table of Contents

You can enhance navigation within a large HTML report by adding a dynamic HTML-based Table of Contents (TOC). To take advantage of this feature, the report must contain at least one vertical sort (BY) field. If you include more than one sort field in a report, the hierarchy is determined by the order in which the sort fields are specified in the request.

The TOC also enhances the display of groups of data. You can view one section (or page) of the report at a time, or you can view all sections at once. You can control this with a page break. For more information, see Grouping Sort Fields for Display.

The TOC displays all values of the first (highest-level) vertical sort field, as well as the values of any lower level BY fields that you designate for inclusion. These values are displayed as an expandable series of links or as a series of list controls. Unless otherwise specified in the request, a new page begins when the highest-level sort field changes.

The display of data for a lower level sort field is controlled by your selection of a higher-level sort field value. For example, in a report sorted first by country and then by car model, if you choose Italy from the TOC for country, you will only see a listing of Italian models in the TOC for cars. Cars produced in other countries are not displayed.

Using the TOC, you can:

• View any section of a report by clicking the associated link.
• Toggle between a single section and the entire report content by clicking View Entire Report.
• Remove the TOC by clicking Remove Table of Contents. This is beneficial when printing the report from the browser. Double-click anywhere in the report to restore it and continue navigation.

The TOC itself is an object that initially appears as an icon in the upper-left corner of the report or as one or more drop-down lists in a page heading or footing or a report heading or footing.

• Heading Option. To add the TOC to a heading or footing, you can use a StyleSheet. See Add TOC Drop-down List Controls to a Heading.
• Report Option. To add an HTML TOC object to the upper-left hand corner of a report, you can use a SET command or a PCHOLD command. See Add a TOC Tree Control to a Report Using a SET Command.

The sizing of tables within the HTML report is done by the browser. The columns are sized to fit the largest data value, and trailing spaces are automatically removed. In standard HTML reports, the data is presented in a single table, so the column widths are fixed for all data rows. Both HTML BYTOC (Report)/TOC (Heading) features place the data for each sort key value into individual tables or sections that are accessed using the HTML control. In the HTML BYTOC/TOC reports, the column widths in each individual table are determined by the data presented for each value, rather than the overall report. These different table sizes become apparent when the View Entire Report option is selected. Set SQUEEZE = OFF to define fixed column widths across all of the tables.