Fields
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A pivot grid field represents a subset of data that corresponds to a data field in a data source. Fields are visually represented by field headers which can be moved between the control’s areas using drag-and-drop operations. Dragging fields between the areas modifies the layout of the report.
To create a report in the ExpressPivotGrid control, pivot grid fields should be created and positioned within appropriate areas using the following steps:
create a field object using the pivot grid’s CreateField method. By default, the type of the created field (unbound or data-aware) corresponds to the type of the control;
specify the field’s area and position within this area via the Area and AreaIndex properties.
A field can be positioned within one of four areas: the column, row, data, and filter header Area.
The area in which a field is positioned determines the field’s functionality:
Fields within the column header area (also called column fields) list their values along the control’s top edge. These values represent specific categories and are displayed in column headers.
Fields within the row header area (also called row fields) list its values downside the control’s left edge. Like the column field values, these values represent specific categories and are displayed in row headers.
Fields within the data header area (also called data fields) provide values to calculate summaries. The summaries are calculated for all the data cells. Each cell is identified by specific categories, i.e. a column and row.
Fields within the filter header area (also called filter fields) can be used by end-users to filter data supplied to the control for summary calculations via the filter dropdown. Fields can be placed temporarily in this area for further layout customization. For instance, they can be dragged to a different area later on.
The ExpressPivotGrid supports bound and unbound fields. A bound pivot grid field is connected to a specific data field in a data source and so retrieves data from this field. An unbound pivot grid field is not connected to a field in a data source and it should be populated with data manually via its Values property or via the pivot grid’s DataController.Values property.
The type of data which is displayed by any pivot grid field can be specified via its DataBinding.ValueType and DataBinding.ValueTypeClass properties. For bound data-aware fields, these properties are specified automatically according to the type of the bound data field. To make a data-aware field unbound, set its DataBinding.FieldName property to an empty string.