Question

I would like to create a report that will display a variable amount of images i.e. 2 or 3 or 4 and so on. I have a dataset that returns the path to each of these images,see example.

SELECT Path FROM Photos
returns:
‘C:\photos\photo1.jpg
‘C:\photos\photo2.jpg
‘C:\photos\photo3.jpg
‘C:\photos\photo4.jpg

another dataset could return:
‘C:\photos\photo7.jpg
‘C:\photos\photo8.jpg
‘C:\photos\photo9.jpg

What I want the report to look like:

For example 1 I want 3 pictures across the report and then another on on the second line

For example 2 I just want 3 pictures across the report.

I have tried using a table and tablix and can not get it to work. Any Ideas?

Answer 1

Get your paths from the database in three fields. Then put the fields in three columns of a table.

The idea for the query is to get the 1st, 4th, 7th… path in column1, the 2nd, 5th, 8th … path in column 2, and the 3rd, 6th, 9th… path in column 3.

Number the paths using How to select the nth row in a SQL database table?, and use a modulo 3 function with a self join to create three columns.

create table #photo
(
    Path varchar(100)
)
go

insert into #photo values ('Path1')
insert into #photo values ('Path2')
insert into #photo values ('Path3')
insert into #photo values ('Path4')
insert into #photo values ('Path5')
insert into #photo values ('Path6')
insert into #photo values ('Path7')
insert into #photo values ('Path8')

go

WITH Ordered AS (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY Path)-1 AS RowNumber, Path
FROM #photo)
SELECT Ord1.Path as Col1Path, Ord2.Path as Col2Path, ord3.Path as Col3Path
FROM Ordered Ord1
left outer join
Ordered Ord2
on Ord1.RowNumber = Ord2.RowNumber - 1
left outer join 
Ordered Ord3
on Ord3.RowNumber = Ord2.RowNumber + 1
where Ord1.RowNumber % 3 = 0


drop table #photo