Online Advantage stores its data in a database that supports multi-dimensional data. In short this means that the data being stored does not have to conform to the restricted two dimensional row and column view of the world that many databases adhere to. Storing data in a multi-dimensional way offers many performance and storage benefits over two dimensional databases.
However there are many times when a user does not want to be presented with data in this type of format as they want to extract data out in a flat row and column format. This is particularly the case when a user wants to take OA data into a spread-sheet application like Excel and “sort” that data. When you sort data, you want all the data that relates to a row to stay together.
For these reasons we have introduced a new option when creating a report that tells the system to flatten out the data it retrieves into a row and column list. This often means repeating data many times so it appears in every row where it relates. A classic example of this would be the repeating of a Customers Name and Address details on every order line for every order placed against the customer.
You will find when creating new reports from database tables that this new “Flatten Report Data” check-box will appear. See sample below:
