Understanding Drill-through Concepts
Before you set up drill-through access, you
must understand the key concepts about drilling through. Knowing these
concepts will help you to avoid errors so that report consumers drill
through as efficiently as possible.
- Drill-through Paths
You can create a drill-through path in a source report in IBM® Cognos® Report Studio, or using Drill-through Definitions in IBM Cognos Connection. A drill-through path is the definition of the path that is taken when moving from one report to another, including how the data values are passed between the reports. - Selection Contexts
The selection context represents the structure of the values selected by the user in the source. - Drilling Through to Different Report Formats
The settings in the drill-through definition determine the format in which users see the report results. - Drilling Through Between Packages
You can set up drill-through access between packages. - Bookmark References
When you drill through, the values that you pass are usually, but not always, used to filter the report. IBM Cognos Business Intelligence supports bookmarks within saved PDF and HTML reports so that a user can scroll a report to view the relevant part based on a URL parameter. - Members and Values
Dimensionally modeled data, whether stored in cubes or stored as dimensionally modeled relational (DMR) data, organizes data into dimensions. These dimensions contain hierarchies. The hierarchies contain levels. And the levels contain members. - Member Unique Names
The member unique name (MUN) is a unique identifier for a member in IBM Cognos reports. It is stored in the report specification when the member is referenced in the report directly. - Conformed Dimensions
If you work with more than one dimensional data source, you may notice that some dimensions are structured the same, and some are not. - Business Keys
When drill-through access is defined from a member to a relational value, the business key of the member is passed by default. - Scope
Scope is specific to drill-through definitions created using Drill-through Definitions in IBM Cognos Connection (package drill-through definitions). The scope you set defines when the target report is shown to the users, based on the items they have in the source report. - Mapped Parameters
Drill-through targets may contain existing parameters or you can add parameters to the target for greater control over the drill-through link. - Drilling Through on Dates Between PowerCubes and Relational Packages
The usual method of drilling through from OLAP to relational packages requires that the target report parameter is set using the business key in the relational data, which does not work well for dates.
Parent topic: Using Drill-through Access