Representing null dates as blanks

[aparnaramsharma]

Dear all,

Is there any way to represent null dates as blanks in a WebI report. My problem is when download option is used in WebI, the null dates are returned as #EMPTY.

Can the date object in the universe be manipulated to represent '' when null? If I do so, I get a data type mismatch error. How else do I define the object?

Do I manipulate the object or is there possibility to display blanks in the WebI report when the date field is null?

Thanks,
Aparna

 

[blom0344]

DB2: Coalesce(,) function
ORACLE: NVL(,) function
SQL server: Replace(?) function ?

Ties Blom
Information analyst
tbl@shimano-eu.com

 

[aparnaramsharma]

Coalesce(,) function works fine for character and number data types if we return ' ' or 0 for null values. But what should be the value for date data type.
Thanks,
Aparna

 

[blom0344]

Do you need the dates as dates, or is the string representation good enough?

CASE WHEN CHAR(DATEFIELD) IS NULL THEN NULL ELSE CHAR(DATEFIELD,ISO) END

or something along that line.......

Ties Blom
Information analyst
tbl@shimano-eu.com

 

[aparnaramsharma]

I need the dates and dates. I am using this in Business Objects WebI report. In WebI report I cannot create a calculation like this. In the universe I do not want to create an other object of character data type unless there is no other solution to represent the null dates as blanks.

Thanks,
Aparna

 

[blom0344]

I remember that when I just started with BO (in version 4!) that I simply could substitute the error messages themselves with an empty string (in the report itself)
Did you try something along those lines?

Ties Blom
Information analyst
tbl@shimano-eu.com

 

[aparnaramsharma]

Hi Blom,

I cannot do any manipulation in a WebI report.

Thanks,
Aparna