Can we use Excel for Business Rule layer btwn DB and DSKIRPT

building reports desktopintelligence
1

We have about 10 reports for different sector and the only difference between them is the combination of 3 values (comp-id, acct-id and prod-id), but the issue is the combination changes every month and reassign to different sector.

Currently we go and change each report variable (where combination is hard-coded) to correct the report every month, and what I like to do is to take this hard-code variable away and maintain in an excel for each sector and add this excel as another personal data provider to all report, so maintenance become easy.

I don’t want to do this in universe, because than we have to update the universe every month.

Is using excel file as middle layer is a good approach?

Is it reliable? Please advice if anyone has prior experience.

SJ

NJBOUSR (BOB member since 2010-04-28)

2

Excel file should be fine, or you can create a lookup table in your database to accomplish the same. That does not require additional universe maintenance once it was built initially, if all you are doing is updating the combinations and their assignment. (It’s not too uncommon a business need).

The database option gives you a little more structure around it and a little more control than a file which can be modified by anyone.

digpen :us: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)