Drill Down reports

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1

Hi Everyone,

We are sending this email again with the hope that few of you will reply to it and share their knowledge and experience and give us a head-start for the solution. We guess the solution to the problem lies in Aggreate Awareness Feature of Business Object but due to lack of experience with BO and Data Warehouse, we are struck.

We are currently developing in-house prototype universe and reports for the company. We have to develop reports where user can drill down for more detail information.

We have performed data transformation and created two tables:

a) Invoice Item Table : It contains information about items and their
quantity and net price for each invoice. We store because it can be different for different customer. b) Invoice Table : It contains information about Invoices such as
invoice number, invoice date, customer,
quantity of items and Net Discounted Price. We store Net Discounted Price because it has to be calculated on number of factors.

The report is to get the no. of invoices and the total amount invoiced for each month in the Rolling 12-month year. Then the users will like to drill down to invoices in any given month and further drill down to items in the invoice.

We are facing problem with three things: 1) How to do rolling 12-month?
2) How to create objects for drill down on Quantity and Amount? 3) How to create Hierarchies for drill down?

We will appreciate any kind of help and suggestions. We can also make changes to the architecture to our reporting Database to accomodate the solutions for above mentioned problems.

Thanks in advance,
James White and Tony Lopez

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Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

2

We are facing problem with three things: 1) How to do rolling 12-month?
2) How to create objects for drill down on Quantity and Amount? 3) How to create Hierarchies for drill down?

James,
What date is the rolling 12 months based on? For example, is it invoice date ? Would rolling 12 months from today (aug 23) take you from Aug 22, 1997 - Aug 22, 1998. If so, you can build a predefined condition that says something like “where invoice date between today minus 1 and today minus 265 days.”
Depending on your definition of rolling 12 month and your database preformance, that may be real inefficient. You may need to store month on the database.

Another idea is create rolling a 12 month tables. You can then point the users directly to this table and not use a where clause.

As far as drill down, you can build hierarchies on dimensions so you can drill down or accross for measures. For example, You may have a geography hierarchy such as Region, State, County. That would be your hierarchy. If you query region and amount, you would be able to drill to state then county showing the amount at the different levels. So in your example, your hierarchy may be month, invoice number, item number.

Another thought involves a different approach … report presentation (versus designer). A report presentation you may want to consider is a report that displays the high level invoice by month. To see the detail, the users can “unfold” that section of the report. You can unfold many levels deep (month, invoice , item). Folds are based on report breaks.

As far as aggregate aware, the purpose of that powerful function is performance. For example, you want your users to query on quantity and amount but you have 10 years of data stored at the daily invoice level (lots of data). A lot of the time the users want the information rolled up by month. So, you physically create a table similar to your detail table but store the info at the invoice month (instead of day) level. You then use the aggrete aware function ad Aggregate Navigation tool to tell business objects which table to query.

That’s all my thoughts for now,
Lori Furda
SAGE Solutions, Inc.
Lori_SAGE@solution4u.com

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

3

Hi All,

Can any one throw some light on the Drill Reports and how they work in both BO 5.1 & Web-I 2.6.2 and things like setting the scope of analysis and how to use that in the report for analysis ? Thanks in advance. Can we drill through Multiple Dimensions like if I drill by Dimension A, Can I see the other dimensions like B,C,D and so on… at the same level. Is there a limit on this ? If this is a topic, which was already discussed you can mail me in person at

sarat.srinivas@lighting.ge.com

Sarat Srinivas

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

4

Hi All,

ok no body responded to my questions yesterday. So, I want to try my luck again. I have read the BO User Guide and came to know the answers of my questions to some extent. Now I have another question running in my mind. Hope any body out there can help me with the answer. In the Designer’s Guide ( DESIGNER51EN.PDF - page : 188 ), it was given that for multidimensional analysis : drill (available only with the BUSINESS OBJECTS EXPLORER). what does this mean ? Can any body throw some light on the BUSINESS OBJECTS EXPLORER ? Can I not drill using the BO Reporter,Designer, & Supervisor ? Do I need to get the EXPLORER TOO ?
Thanks in advance AND HAVE A NICE DAY

Sarat.

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

5

businessobjects.virtualteam@UK.ROYALSUN.COM

The Explorer bit relates the the type of licence you can get for Business Objects. There are three types - Infoview, Reporter and Explorer. Explorer is the only one that you can do drill down analysis in.

Thanks,
Lee.

“Srinivas, Sarat (GEL, MSX)” Sarat.Srinivas@LIGHTING.GE.COM @LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
16/05/2001 15:48

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6

In a message dated 01-05-16 10:50:22 EDT, you write:

In the Designer’s Guide
( DESIGNER51EN.PDF - page : 188 ), it was given that for multidimensional analysis : drill (available only with the BUSINESS OBJECTS EXPLORER). what does this mean ? Can any body throw some light on the BUSINESS OBJECTS EXPLORER ? Can I not drill using the BO Reporter,Designer, & Supervisor ?
Do
I need to get the EXPLORER TOO ?

Explorer is not a product, it is a license. You would use Designer to set up your hierarchies in the universe. Then if you have a license for Explorer (a module of Reporter) then you can set up and drill.

The license hierarchy goes like this:

Infoview - read, refresh, and print
Reporter - create reports and use slice and dice Explorer - drill

If you have Reporter licenses only, you cannot drill on your reports. Note that these “roles” are independent of whether you are using full client or Webi; the same roles and functionality rules apply in each case.

So if you want to be able to create reports, you need to have Reporter. If you only want to be able to refresh, drill, and print, then you can get a combo of Infoview + Explorer. If you want the complete functionality of the BO Reporter tool, you need to get a license for Infoview + Reporter + Explorer.

Hope this helps you understand!

Regards,
Dave Rathbun
Integra Solutions
www.islink.com

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

7

Thanks a lot Lee and Dave for the immediate reply I really appreciate this.

Sarat.

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

8

Hi All,

Is there a way to know whether we have the license for Explorer ? I am able to drill the reports. Does this mean that I have the license to Explorer ?

Thanks a lot,
Sarat.

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

9

Sarat

The easiest way to tell if you have the explorer licenses is to check your STANDARD toolbar. If you see the explorer icon which is a magnifying glass then you have the license.

Mike

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

10

In a message dated 01-05-16 13:05:42 EDT, you write:

Is there a way to know whether we have the license for Explorer ? I am able
to drill the reports. Does this mean that I have the license to Explorer ?

When you install BusObj you have to enter a “key”. This key unlocks the features that you have a license for. As Mike mentioned, if you have the magnifying glass icon on your toolbar and you can drill, then you have at least one license for explorer. :slight_smile:

You probably need to check your sales agreement. It is possible license 100 clients with only 10 Explorer licenses, for example. But there is no metering within the product to make sure that you don’t install Explorer on all 100 workstations. In other words, just because you have drill capabilities doesn’t mean that you have them for everyone in your company.

Something to think about anyway.

Regards,
Dave Rathbun
Integra Solutions
www.islink.com

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)