How does the format mask work in Oracle APEX? - database

I have just been given an assignment for University on databases where I have to use Oracle APEX. For one of my columns in a report, I need to use a format mask. The format mask I need in the form of AAAA00, where A is any letter and 0 is any number.
Trying to get this to work is an issue though. I've heard the syntax for any number is 9 and I assume it's A for the letter, so wouldn't the format mask be AAAA99?
This is what I tried
I tried using it but didn't succeed. When using the form, you can still input anything. I even tried using one of the default date options for the format mask, and that didn't work either.
Any ideas on what to do?

Oracle APEX Format Mask is only for the Number and Date type objects, you can't format strings using it.
Also, Format Masks are for display only, lets say I have a mask 9G9G9G9 in an Interactive Grid column, it would display numbers like : 3,1,4,1. I could go and edit my cell putting 1337, it won't change until I save my report, it will then format itself in my mask and display my number as 1,3,3,7.
I believe you are trying to restrict your user from giving an input other than in your format, (an input mask), I believe this post could help you achieve what you are trying .

Related

How to add leading zeros in ADF data flow from the expression builder

How to add leading zeros in ADF data flow from the expression builder
For example – have column with numeric value as “000001” but it is coming as 1 only in SQL DB , if I put in entire value in single quotes it is coming but I need dynamic way of implementation with out hard coding.
I agree with #Larnu's comments that even if we give 00001 to an int type column it will give as 1 only.
So, we have to give those in single quotes ('00001') to use like that or import the incoming data as string instead of int.
As you are using ADF dataflow, if you want to use the 00001, you can generate those using derived column transformation from SQL source. But this depends on your requirement like how your leading 0's varies. So, use according to it.
Sample demo:
concat('0000', toString(id))
Result:
Use that column as per your requirement, after that you can convert it back to the same input by toInteger(id).

SSRS Format Numeric not summarizing in excel

I need to set a format for a column when the column "KPI" has a value with '%' I need that the value has the format for a percentage otherwise the currency format, so I have something like this:
=IIF(InStr(Fields!KPI.Value,"%")>0,Format(Fields!DIA.Value, "P"),Format(Fields!DIA.Value, "C"))
That expression works properly, but when I try to export that report to excel, that column is not summarizing when I select several columns as you will see in this picture:
As you can see excel is recounting but not summarizing, I have tried formatting each field from SQL Server and with this formula:
=IIF(InStr(Fields!KPI.Value,"%")>0,Format(Fields!DIA.Value, "###.#%"),Format(Fields!DIA.Value, "###,###,###,###.##"))
But the same happend when I export that report to excel, is there another way to handle this?
In order to make sure that Excel interprets a value as numeric, you can use the RenderFormat global variable to detect when the report is being rendered for Excel and not include the problematic formatting characters:
=IIF(InStr(Fields!KPI.Value,"%")>0,Format(Fields!DIA.Value, "###.#%"),IIF(OR(Globals!RenderFormat.Name="EXCELOPENXML",Gl‌​obals!RenderFormat.N‌​ame="EXCEL"),Fields!‌​DIA.Value,Format(Fie‌​lds!DIA.Value, "###,###,###,###.##")))
If its critical that you display a thousands separator in your generated output you can use the Language global variable to detect the user's region and use the appropriate character. That check would take the general form Globals.Lanuage="en-US", depending on what particular regions are involved.
Here's an example of using the RenderFormat.Name variable to check the renderer in VS2013:
When doing a preview of the report, the format will show that the render type is RPL:

Treat Comma and Period as Decimal Separator in Navision Decimal Fields

I want to eliminate an error source, often happening in our company. In our country, we use the comma as decimal separator and a valid decimal number looks something like this: 85,32
The problem is, that the users sometimes press the period instead of the comma, because the keys are next to each other on the keyboard and they do not recognize their mistakes. Navision now formats the number entered 85.32 to 8.532,00 what leads to wrong data in our database.
I tried to set the AutoFormatType to 10 and the AutoFormatExpr to something like this <Integer><Point or Comma><Decimals> and I played around with some other values for AutoFormatExpr, but it still does not recognize the period as a valid comma separator. I even tried to format it afterwards at the OnValidate-trigger, but the AutoFormat logics of navision seems to come first and the value is already altered before the OnValidate field triggers gets executed.
I want to setup my page (or a specific decimal field in particular) that, no matter if the user types 85,33 or 85.33, the result should be 85,33.
Substitution way. Create a field on form(page) with SourceExpr of string type then parse it to whatever you like decimal format and save it to the real field.

Using text in a column of Date/Time type in access

I have a column in MS Access in which the data could be any of the following:
A date
Text string: "n/a"
Text string: "n/e"
The vast majority of entries will be dates but a very few will need to be these specified text strings. I would like to still be able to perform date calculations on the column. Whats the best datatype to use?
In my opinion the best approach would be to leave the date field as Date/Time and then add another field to indicate the status if the Date/Time field is Null. Something like:
DateField DateStatus
--------- ----------
2014-09-21
n/a
2014-09-23
2014-09-25
n/e
You could use a single Text field, but then any time you wanted to use the field value as a proper Date/Time value you'd have to convert it using CDate(). You would also have the possibility of other junk getting in there, or dates getting entered in different formats (e.g. d/m/yyyy vs. m/d/yyyy). And finally, you would lose the ability to easily determine whether a Date/Time value is in a particular row (which in my approach would simply be ... WHERE DateField IS [NOT] NULL).
I agree with Gord Thompson's answer - mainly because it's so non-intuitive to have, essentially, two completely different types of data in a single column, and because it's going to make validation/data integrity stuff so much harder with little upside - and, as he indicates with the CDate() reference, dates basically only work reliably like dates if they're in a "date/time" field. Microsoft has a page on choosing a data type that explains some of the Access-specific differences in more detail.
I also suggest that you don't actually have a text field for those "comments," since you say there's only a handful of potential options - use a Long Integer and connect back to a separate table with the list of allowable entries. This will allow you to run reports more easily, change the "display text" in one step instead of potentially dozens of times, etc. It also saves a relatively small amount of space per record (long integer = 4 bytes; text = up to 255 bytes.)
You can also do fun data/reporting stuff with that Comment (long integer) field and dates - even combined into ranges, by the way - queries let you use the two different columns to create a single answer. I have a report that's grouped so that you can see stats for everything that's active (by quarter in which they start) plus everything that's pending (with the code indicating who's responsible for watching this record,) plus everything that's not pending but still doesn't have a start date (with the reason code displayed,) plus everything that's expired (by quarter in which they ended.) It looks like each of those things is in a single column in the report, but it's actually like five columns that have been concatenated with the IIf function.
(Almost every argument I can come up with boils down to "this is what relational databases are all about and why they're so awesome.)

VB.Net - Excel application get showing values of an range

I'm trying get an Excel Range and copy into an array of objects with Vb.Net.
This is not a problem. I use the following code:
Dim vValues(,) As Object = ExcelApp.Range(vRange).Value
And works fine; but I have a the following case:
In the column "C"; the value has a specific format and internally has another value.
My question is:
Somebody know the way to get the information exact as the user see?
I'm trying to get the information without use a For ... Each or some kind of cycle.
I'm also tried to avoid use "text to columns" function.
Both seems right solutions, but would impact the performance with a lot of data.
FYI: Also I can get the information through the ODBC connection; but I'm searching the solution using a Range
Exactly what the user sees is the Text property. But you cannot have an array of that, you will have to query each cell individually.
You are getting a Double value in your array instead of a DateTime value because you have "Time" formatting applied in Excel. If you had a format from the "Date" category, Excel would instead send a proper Variant/Date, not a Double that represents it.
Another option would be constructing the DateTime objects on the .NET side, provided you know in which columns they should be.

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