Users often must limit the data that goes into a report. For example, a table can contain sales figures for the past three years, but you only want a report on sales data for the previous quarter. You can use the Column Options frame to specify that RBF ask the user to enter criteria for the data to be selected from that column when the report is run. This is called runtime data selection.

Runtime data selection is specified on a column-by-column basis. If the report has a Date column, and you specify a runtime data selection range for that column, each time a user runs the report RBF can ask the user to enter a minimum (earliest) date and the maximum (latest) date. The resulting report can only contain data from rows in which the date falls within the specified range.

You can specify runtime data selection on more than one column. For example, you can specify a runtime data selection for both the Date and Customer columns. In this case, the user could specify a range of dates for a particular customer at report runtime.

You can specify runtime data selection for both sort and nonsort columns.

Enter options in the Selection Criteria column on the Column Options frame to specify whether RBF must use runtime selection criteria. The Column Options frame provides three runtime data selection criteria options, as shown in the following table. You must specify one of these options for each column in the report.

In a default report specification, all columns are set to the none option (no runtime data selection).

Each time a user runs a report for which the value or range runtime data selection option has been specified, RBF asks the user to enter the selection criteria before running the report: