Reports- Supplement Queried Records with generated ones

[slschneider]

We have a Report frame that consists of 60 fields organized in 3 columns by 20 rows. All of the fields must be filled in. If the corresponding Query returns 3 records to the Group, then we need to "pad" the remaining 57 fields with "*****". I've tried several approaches to this problem, centering around a union, with a select from dual based on the number of "real" records returned. A function returning a table of records sounded like a good idea, until I realized that I couldn't use it in an SQL statement "select..from DUAL". If I was writing in a conventional programming language, this would be no problem. I'm just not sure how to dynamically insert the generated records into the Group to get them to appear on the report. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Steve

 

[nagornyi]

select 
decode(a.field1,null,b.field1,a.field1) the_field 
from
(select [b]your_field[/b] field1, rownum field2 from [b]your_table[/b]) a
,
(select '*******' field1, rownum field2 from all_tables where rownum<61) b
where a.field2(+)=b.field2
___________________________________________________________________________

 

[slschneider]

Thanks so very much. Perfect solution!