Beta 3 of SharpDevelop 4.0 ships with a new feature in SharpDevelop Reports - Grouping. Currently, the only way to create a report that supports grouping is via the Report Wizard; you have to check Grouping (List Layout is the only layout supported at this time!) and then select the column to group by:

This will create a report for you and display it in the designer. Here is an example:

Please note the GroupedHeaderRow (shown in light gray back color): you can insert controls to your liking here. In this example (left to right): TextItem, DataItem (GroupColumn, which is the "group by" field), TextItem (a calculated field in this sample).

Below is the standard DetailsRow, which also sports a calculated field. The finished reports looks like this in the built-in Report Viewer:

As you can see, a pretty neat feature!

Speaking about neat features - there is one more I'd like to point out: smart tags.

Now you can set the data type and format string for TextItems not only via the property grid, but also via smart tags. (Format strings can be set only for valid data types)

Finally, a few words on the road(map) to SharpDevelop 4.0 final:

• Automatic page break after group
• Grouping support in table layouts
• Sum() across group, Sum() for entire report
• Simple static subreports (think "static" recurring information, eg company stationary, that can be reused across multiple reports). Limited to report header.