Represents the behavior common data properties for groups.

An element can be divided into a number of groups. Groups often have subtotals. For example, a sales report may show totals per sales rep and region.

A data group is defined by a group key. The key is a column from the query. If the group key is a time field then user often want to group on an interval such as month or quarter.

A filter to apply to the each group as a whole. The filter conditions should apply to values that are constant for each group. This means that the filter expressions should be functionally dependent  on the group key, or should be defined on aggregates computed over the group. For example, display only customers with non-zero sales totals, or display only the top 10 customers as determined by sales.

Optional name of the group. The group name must be unique within the list or table. The name is used to identify the group in aggregates as explained in the scripting specification.

This property allows the group to include a range of contiguous values. For example, a monthly sales report may want to summarize a list of individual transactions, each of which has a transaction date. Using the Month interval, BIRT will cause a break to occur each time the transaction dates move into a different calendar month.

Use this property with the intervalRange property to select a set of contiguous values. For example, a bi-monthly report would use the Month interval with an intervalRange of 2.

intervalRange Property

In conjunction with Interval and IntervalRange, determines how data is divided into groups.

When creating intervals, this attribute allows grouping on a range of contiguous values. For example, to show data over the span of three hours, set the grouping interval to hours and the range to 3. The user enters the interval range here.

The following shows the meaning of the range for each interval type.

Interval	Meaning of Range
None	Ignored
Prefix	The number of characters in the prefix.
Date/Time	The number of the units.
Interval	The numeric interval

interval Property

Gives the group key as an expression. The group key says when to cause a group break listing. For example, if the group is by state, then the group key might be "row.state". A level break occurs each time the key changes. At each level break, the current group is ended, and a new group started. The expression most often is just a column, but can be a computed value.

Custom sort criteria to apply to the groups as a whole. For example, the report may group customers by customer ID, but sort the customers by total sales or by customer name.

sortDirection property

The sort direction applies only if the List does not have a custom sort defined using the sort property. The default group sort key is the group key.

sort Property

Sort type