About Collection Hierarchies in Report Type Forms

Report type forms can include data from several different IDO collections in a single report. This is done by adding secondary collections to the Report type form and then retrieving specific data from each collection.

This secondary collection data can also be retrieved in a hierarchical fashion, by specifying the primary collection or another secondary collection as the "parent" of a given collection. This is done by setting the Parent Collection property of a secondary collection to specify the collection you want as the "parent" collection. The parent collection might or might not be the primary collection.

This hierarchy determines the order in which each collection's data is processed in the report output.

For example, suppose you wanted to produce a report of customer orders that includes any notes, order lines, and shipment information, similar to this:

Order 
    Order Notes 
    Order Lines  
        Order Line Notes 
        Order Shipments  
            Order Shipment Notes

In this example, the Order IDO collection would be the primary collection. There would be five secondary collections, one for each "descendant" of Order.

As we have set it up, two of these secondary collections--Order Notes and Order Lines--would be set up to use the primary collection, Order, as the "parent" collection. The Order Line Notes collection and Order Shipment collection would both be set up with the Order Lines collection as their parent collections. And the Order Shipment Notes collection would be set up with Order Shipments as its parent collection.

Order 
    Order Notes (Parent collection: Order)
    Order Lines  (Parent collection: Order) 
        Order Line Notes (Parent collection: Order Lines)
        Order Shipments (Parent collection: Order Lines) 
            Order Shipment Notes (Parent collection: Order Shipments)