1/2/08

Cognos 8 Report Studio -- Drill Through Report

How to create a Drill Through report

Sample Scenario: You have been asked to create a Drill Through report sample using the Great Outdoors model. You decide to show this behaviour creating a report that lists product sales by order method for each product line, and allows users to drill through from the sales report to view the product details for any item selected. You need to create two reports: one that contains the details for the item; and another that lists the product sales for the order methods selected by users.

1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Open Report Studio and select the GO Sales and Retailers package. Create a new List report. Add the following query items from the Orders and Products query subjects to the report page. a. Order method b. Product line c. Product type d. Product name e. Description f. Introduction date g. Product image Group the Order method, Product line, and Product type columns. Click the filters button and add the following filters: a. [Product name]=?p_ProductName? b. [Order method] in ?p_OrderMethod? Change the title of the report to Product Details. Save the report as Product Details. From the File menu, click New to create a new List report. Add the following query items from the Orders and Products query subjects. a. Order method b. Product line c. Product type d. Product name e. Quantity f. Revenue Group the Order method, Product line, and Product type columns. Add the following filter to the report: a. [Order method] in ?p_OrderMethod? Right-click the Product Name column and click Drill Throughs. Click the new drill through button. Under Report, click the ellipsis points (...) and select the Product Details report you created previously. Click Action and click Run the report. Click Format and click HTML. Click the edit button. For the item p_OrderMethod, under Method, select Pass parameter value, and select p_OrderMethod for the Value. For the item p_ProductName, under Method, select Pass data item value, and select Product name for the Value. Click OK twice. Change the title of the report to Product Revenue by Order Method.

22. Save the report as Product Revenue by Order Method. 23. Click the run report button. When the report is run, you are prompted to select one or more order methods.

When you click OK, the list will show the product names as clickable links. When a product is clicked, the second report will run, showing the order methods and product selected in the first report.

What Is Drill-Through Reporting?

Drill-through reporting allows you to link from one report to another. You can drill through in a number of ways, for example from one report to another, a query to a report, or a multidimensional analysis to a report. The ability to drill through has a number of advantages. For example, a multidimensional analysis in Analysis Studio may only contain summarised information. Suppose the data source might contain total revenue for each team, by month. This data is summarised to Team level and also Month level. Since it takes processing time to summarise data at each level, the dimensional analysis would be slowed down by another level in both the Time and Location levels (which contain the Months and Teams). Instead, a report is produced to list detailed information for each team member, and this is held for each week rather than month. The drill-down will allow the user access to this information without compromising the processing and retrieval times for the multidimensional analysis. Another advantage of using drill-through reporting is that a single drill-through report can be used in a number of ways. The drill-through may be defined in Cognos Connection, which allows access to any user with the appropriate permissions

Set Up Parameters for a Drill-Through Report

For greater control over drill-through access, you can define parameters in the target report. For more information about defining parameters, see the Report Studio Professional Authoring User Guide or the Query Studio User Guide.

Steps in Report Studio

1. Open the target report in Report Studio Professional authoring mode. 2. Ensure that the report is available for drill-through access: From the Data menu, select Drill Behavior. In the Basic tab, select Accept dynamic filters when this report is a drillthrough target and then click OK. 3. Create a parameter that will serve as the drill-through column, or that will be used to filter the report. (Data menu, Filters). For example, to drill through or filter on Product line, create a parameter that looks like this:

[Product line]=?prodline_p? Tip: Use the operators in or in_range if you want the target report to accept multiple values, or a range of values. 4. In the Usage box, specify what to do when a value for the target parameter is not passed as part of a drill-through: To specify that users must click a value in the source report, click Required. If a value for the target parameter is not passed, users are prompted to choose a value. To specify that users do not need to click a value in the source report, click Optional. Users are not prompted to choose a value and so the value is unfiltered. To specify not to use the parameter, click Disabled. The parameter is not used in the report, and therefore not available for drillthrough definitions. For more information about defining report parameters, see the Report Studio Professional Authoring User Guide. Tip: If the parameter is needed in the report for other reasons, then you can also specify not to use it in the drill-through definition (Parameters table, Method, Do not use parameter). The drill-through definition controls when prompt pages or parameters are displayed.

Steps in Query Studio

1. Open the target report in Query Studio. 2. Confirm that the report is available for drill-through access: From the menu, select Run Report, Advanced Options. Select Enable drill through from a package in the report output and then click OK. 3. Create a filter that will serve as the drill-through parameter, or that will be used to filter the report.
4.

Select the column that you want to filter on, and click the filter button. Change the settings as needed, and click OK.
What is Report Bursting?

5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. Set burst options for the report to indicate what data item to burst on and who the recipients are. 19. Burst options are set in Report Studio under File -> Burst Options

Bursting reports is the technique used to run a report once and divide the results for distribution to unique recipients. Advantages There can be significant performance improvements by using report bursting. For example, if you need to distribute a sales report 50 sales persons with the results separated by the salesman you have two options. You could run the report 50 times filtering the report differently (by salesperson) for each run or you could run the report once and burst the results to each salesperson. By running the report once and bursting the results, the database is only hit once instead of 50 times. If you have a large database with a complex report, only running the query one time can be a huge performance benefit. Disadvantages Setting up a report with bursting capabilities requires upfront planning and requires more development effort. If you are bursting using email, you need to have a quality list of email addresses in your database and the email addresses need to be able to relate to the data you want to burst on. Additionally, bursting reports can only be implemented with list reports, and is not available for crosstab or chart based reports. How to Set Up Bursting There are 4 steps to set up report bursting 1. Define the burst recipients You will first need to add a query to your report that contains a list of recipients and the data items you want to burst on. For example, if you want to distribute to each person by business unit you may have email addresses and associated business units in your query. 2. Specify the burst groups Within your report you will need to have a burst group. This is the grouped item that you will break your report on. For example, if you group by Business Unit and used it as your burst key, each user would receive a report with the data for only one Business Unit 3. Set the burst options

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Burst Options 4. Enable bursting in Cognos Connection Bursting needs to be set in Cognos Connection prior to running the report To set the burst options first locate the report in Cognos Connection. Under Actions, click Run with options. Click the Advanced options link. Select the "Burst the report" check box. If you are distributing reports by email, select the Send the report by email check box. Report output can be found in the version history for the report