General Dynamic and Cascading Dynamic parameters help needed

[BeeBear]

Hi,

We currently use CR XI and set the reports through a third-party front end product, which negates the use of Dynamic parameters
This is about to be changed (the third party product will be fixed to allow to read the reports through there to BOE (which we are buying) and all functionality will be allowed such as dynamic parameters) so we will be able to use Dynamic and Cascading parameters.

As a newbie to this side of things, I have a few questions that I KNOW someone here can help with

1. Do we have the ability to have an "ALL" option for Dynamic parameters, and how?

2. Is there a way to exclude certain items from a field when populating dynamic parameters - eg we have a staff summary table which includes staff no longer with the company, but of course are still in the database. Can we look at the 'deactivate date' or other deactivated tick in the same table and exclude from the drop-down list based on this?

Note - creating a view for this is not a viable option, as this same scenario will apply to several other summary tables and it slows down the report

3. What do I need to do to create Cascading dynamic parameters. Eg Staff location and staff id. Is it a setting in the background?

Sorry, like I said, I'm new to dynamic parameters.


Any help or ideas would be great.

Thanks


regards

BB

*** Count your blessings not your problems******

 

[briangriffin]

You can solve both problems with a command object - it would look something like this:

select 'All' as Division,'All' as Region,'All' as Employee
union
select division, region, employee
from whatevertables
where employee.deactivatedate is null

You said you can't use a view, and this is a similar approach but it shouldn't really impact performance appreciably. Now the good news is that with BOE you can reuse this same cascading parameter in multiple reports, and you can also schedule it to run at whatever interval is appropriate. So if you don't have a lot of employee turnover you might schedule it to run weekly, and whenever the report is run those values are already available - no performance hit.

LOV's are scheduled through the Business View Manager. You can either create them there, or else whenever you create a cascading parameter in a report it will then appear in the BVM.

 

[BeeBear]

Thanks Brian,

I'll have a go at this once we get our BOE product in a month or two, and see how we go.

Lets hope we have the full functionality to pass through and use the LOV's in the front end product as promised




regards

BB

*** Count your blessings not your problems******