grouping records in crystal reports

Question

I have a table in my oracle database, with the following schema: student(studentNumber,name, dateOfCreation).

dateOfCreation is the date in which the student record was created.

In crystal reports, I have to group the records into the following groups, using the dateOfCreation field:

1. Older than 4 weeks(Records whose dateOfCreation is more than 4 weeks ago).

2. Between 2 and 4 weeks (Records whose dateOfCreation is more than 2 weeks ago, but less than 4 weeks ago).

3. Between 1 and 2 weeks(Records whose dateOfCreation is more than 1 week ago, but less than 2 weeks ago).

4. Less than 1 week (Records whose dateOfCreation is less than 1 week ago).

I have tried grouping in specified order using group expert, but I just can't find these groups. Please help out. How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

Create a formula to group on.

The formula qould read something like (in pseudo code):

if CreationDate > 4 weeks
then A;
else if CreationDate >2 weeks and CreationDate <4 weeks
then B;

You can then create a group on this formula.

CR has adequate date functions in order to find the date difference between creation and the current date.

Answer 2

As @vice suggested, create a formula and then group on it - a formula like this should work:

if      DateDiff ("d", {student.dateOfCreation}, CurrentDate) > 28 then 1
else if DateDiff ("d", {student.dateOfCreation}, CurrentDate) > 14 and
        DateDiff ("d", {student.dateOfCreation}, CurrentDate) < 28 then 2
else if DateDiff ("d", {student.dateOfCreation}, CurrentDate) >  7 and
        DateDiff ("d", {student.dateOfCreation}, CurrentDate) < 14 then 3
else if DateDiff ("d", {student.dateOfCreation}, CurrentDate) <  7 then 4

( {student.dateOfCreation} may need to be amended to match Crystal's representation of this field - you should be able to find this in the Field Tree pane in the Formula Editor.)

Note that this formula matches the conditions in your questions exactly - it therefore does not allow for dateOfCreation values that are exactly 1, 2 or 4 weeks old. I suggest you adjust it to take these into account.