All Grids in Alventis support Dynamic Grid Summaries. Such Summaries can calculate some useful total/subtotal values for the columns they are attached to, such as: Count of records, Sum, Average, Min, Max of the column's values.

There are two kinds of Summaries:

Grid Footer Summaries are located at the very bottom of the grid and are calculated for the entire grid.

Grid Group Summaries are located at the bottom of their respective grouping level and are calculated only for the records within that grouping level.

In Alventis, you can create/modify/delete all such Grid Summaries whenever you wish, which is why we call them Dynamic.

You may have already seen how this Summary manipulation works in Reports. You should be aware of the fact that while providing mostly the same end result, the way it works is different between Reports and the rest of Alventis. We will be only discussing here how it works everywhere in Alventis – except the Reports, which have their own chapter dedicated to them.

Let's start with Grid Footer Summaries. Say, you have a grid, for instance, a Search Results grid, and you would like to create some Summaries for it. For example, have it tell you how many records it is displaying. The first step is to enable the Grid Footer Summary for it by clicking the button that carries the same name. This is a toggle button that simply shows or hides the Summary line at the bottom of the grid. Once we got the Summary line displayed, the rest is easy. Pick the column for which you would like to have some Summary and double-click the Summary line roughly within the vertical boundaries of that column.

This creates the first of possible Summary types using the first mathematical operation applicable to the data type of the column. Since all data types support at the very least counting their records, the first Summary type will always be Count, which is displayed as simply a number. If Count is not what you want, just double-click the Summary again, and the function will change to the next available, if any. So, double-clicking simply cycles through all possible Summary types in the following fashion:

None – Count – Sum – Average – Min – Max

If you keep double-clicking after the last summary type, it wraps around and starts again at the beginning.

Shift-double-clicking cycles in the opposite direction. Functions that are inappropriate for the selected column's data type are simply skipped, so for a string column, you'd only have None – Count to cycle through.

The Grid Group Summaries button toggles the Group Summary lines On/Off, and everything else works exactly the same way: just double-click to the Summary type you want.

Hiding Summary lines that contain some Summaries does not remove the latter, so you can temporarily hide them and then get your entire Summary line back intact with all its totals and averages.

For most grids, Alventis will preserve the Summary setup even if you close and re-open the form. The Dynamic Summaries are not shared between multiple users, if any: the Summaries you create are only visible to you, so you can set them up whichever way you want without worrying about your colleagues not liking your setup.