Selecting Records Overview

When developing a report request, you can define criteria that select records based on a variety of factors:

• The values of an individual field. See Selections Based on Individual Values.
• The aggregate value of a field (for example, the sum or average of field values). See Selection Based on Aggregate Values.
• The existence of missing values for a field, whether field values fall within a range, or whether a field does not contain a certain value. See Types of Record Selection Tests.
• The number of records that exist for a field (for example, the first 50 records), rather than on the field values. See Setting Limits on the Number of Records Read.
• For non-FOCUS data sources that have group keys, you can select records based on group key values. See Selections Based on Group Key Values.

In addition, you can take advantage of a variety of record selection efficiencies, including assigning filtering criteria to a data source and reading selection values from a file.