If you just want to print for example the sum of a calculation or want to output the number of items etc, currently it is neccessary to create a report container, add a table, add virtual dummy data lines that should not be printed, add a footer, add a footer column, then disable all the grid lines, etc. to get your simple one-number-output.
If the text object gets a property “act like a footer” and “data source” and a filter condition like a table object, you can use the statistics functions for example “sum(…)” to get your result. Also it es very practically, if you are filling a form, where for example the sum of an invoice is at a completely other physical position than the actual table.
We’re currently thinking of adding native aggregates. They would work something like this:
NativeCount(Customers.CustomerID, Customers.Country=“DE”)
which would give you the count of customers in Germany for example. These would also work in text objects and would be lightning fast as the aggregate is being calculated by the database directly. Would that help in your case?