Last week's article, Using a Dynamic IN Clause, showed how to display detail records
for a set of user-selected master records. This entailed creating a User Defined Function
(UDF) in the database that would translate a comma-delimited string into tabular data that could then be parsed by SQL's IN keyword.
Following that, the user interface was created using a CheckBoxList to enumerate the master records and a GridView to display the details records for
the checked master records. The demo available at the end of this article includes the exercise created in last week's article, which uses the Northwind
database and the Categories and Products tables as the master and details records, respectively.
Most users who view a master/details report are interested in a particular subset of master records. Such users will quickly become frustrated when visiting
the master/details report because each time they visit they have to tediously check each master record checkbox of interest before seeing the results. This
frustration is heightened when there are many master records that need to be selected. The user experience can be greatly improved by allowing a user to
save their default master record choices and then having the master/details report's master records pre-selected accordingly.
This article takes the master/detail report demo created in the Using a Dynamic IN Clause article and extends it so that the report's master records
are pre-selected based on the user's preferences. Read on to learn more!
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