Help with making a sims report please

[iceman]

Using SIMS I have made result sets and aspects, made templates that use those aspects and resultsets and assigned marksheets.

I am now trying to get a report to show me where each aspect and each result set is used (This will be put into an external system so I can find out exactly which results to expect to get, before results are entered.)

 

I couldn't see how to get a report showing simply which result sets are used where so I designed a report according to the following design.

However the output seems to show that some aspects are not used in any marksheet - when I know they are!

This is the report design

 

and here is a snip of the output showing aspect AO1_PE is used with class 8S/PE2 but apparently not on any template or with any result set. It is also duplicated even though the report has suppress duplicates on.

To prove it below is one of the templates showing the aspects used and the marksheets assigned

 

An additional confusion is that the preview of the report seems to show the correct data - different to the real output.

 

Please can anyone

(a) help explain what is going on here

(b) help me design a report that shows me AspectID, AspectName, ResultSetID, ResultSetName for all the combinations of resultSet and Aspect that I have used in templates

[LosOjos]

First of all, you're misunderstanding "Suppress Duplicates" - all that does is prevent info about a single instance of an entity being reprinted; in your screenshots for instance, the resultset 384 in template 5546 is linked to multiple GroupIDs, but the resultset and template info is only printed once. I always untick "Suppress Duplicates" as it simply makes it more difficult to parse the output.

 

Another thing to note is that the focus of your report is really important; here, your focus is resultset. Because of this, all subreports will only display any data if they are linked to their 'master' i.e. the resultset. In SQL terms, each subreport is essentially a 'LEFT JOIN' on the focus/table EDIT: actually, it's more like an 'INNER JOIN' unless you check the 'Include records with no such entity' in the subreport's options, then it's a 'LEFT JOIN'

 

So, what that report is actually telling you is that A01_PE is linked to template 5546 using the resultset 384

 

I'd argue that your report focus ought to be Template here, as what you really want to know is which templates are using which aspect/resultset combinations. Resultset focus will work but feels logically wrong to me. Also, with resultset as the focus it means that if in future you add any aspects that are not linked to a resultset, they'll be excluded from your report entirely as they'll have no linked 'master'

 

TL;DR - untick "Suppress Duplicates" to regain your sanity!

Edited September 9, 2015 by LosOjos
Clarification/wording

[iceman]

Thank you LosOjos, Its been a while since I used SIMS in anger and I have forgotten the peculiarity of 'suppress duplicates' I remember now and agree that its a pointless thing to do when transferring data somewhere else, especially into an SQL database. Having all the cells filled in makes it easy to normailse into separate tables.

OK that sorts that bit.

 

I did try to use templates as a focus but there seems no way to get the ResultSet being used with each Aspect except by having a subreport based on Results. But then of course you only get resultsets for for the results that have been entered. I need them for all the results that could be entered

 

The gradeset I made (same one for all aspects) does have a symbol representing 'empty' so I could populate all my marksheets with that as a default and the the template focus report would work. However there seems to be no easy way to enter a default result in all marksheets without manually clicking all over the place on every marksheet I have made. I'm already going grey but I'd like to get this done before I lose all my hair completely so that method is not really on. Besides, me entering a value into every possible result pretty much by hand except for a little help from 'Copy column' is not really my idea of a default.

Edited September 9, 2015 by iceman