COGNOS Business Intelligence Series 7

Chapter 5: Provide Drill-through Access
5. Highlight the newly added report, then in the Report Description box, type a description for
each drill-through target.
This description is used in the menu of available drill-through targets in the PowerPlay client
application.
6. Click OK.
7. From the Run menu, click Update PowerCubes.
This writes the drill-through targets to the cube without actually reprocessing the cube.
Notes
• When setting up a cube as a drill-through target in Transformer, you specify a path to the
.mdc file. This is valid for local cubes, however, for cubes deployed to PowerPlay Enterprise
Server, paths are irrelevant. Instead, the server interprets the file name as the name of a cube
added to the root folder, that is, at the server level. For example, the following drill-through
path is entered in Transformer:
c:\cubes\exports_feb.mdc
PowerPlay Enterprise Server identifies the target as a cube by its .mdc extension, and searches
for a cube with the exact name; for example, exports_feb. If found, it drills through to the
cube.
• When setting up cube to cube drill-through targets, ensure that the category codes match
across the models that you use to create PowerCubes. When passing filter information during
the drill-through operation, PowerPlay relies on matching category codes to filter the target
cube based on the dimension line settings in the source cube. This is only an issue if the source
and target cubes are based on different models. If the source and target cubes are both built
from the same Transformer model, category names match automatically.
• When setting up drill through to Cognos Query, if the cube is created from .iqd files other
than those used for the drill through, or from another type of source data file (ASCII or
Impromptu .iqd file, for example), you must ensure that the PowerCube column names
exactly match the Cognos Query column names, including case. If the names do not match,
then the filter that is applied in PowerPlay Web will not be recognized by Cognos Query. You
can solve this potential problem in the following ways:
• Change the query column names to match the column names in your Transformer model.
This is the recommended approach whenever possible.
• Edit the Column Names section of the .iqd file to map PowerPlay column names onto
Cognos Query column names. This is recommended only if the above option is not
possible.
• Change the Transformer query column names to match the column names in Cognos
Query. This is not recommended in most cases, as it can cause problems in existing
models.
Tips
• When setting up drill through to Impromptu or Impromptu Web Reports, you use .imr files as
drill-through targets. If you use an .iqd file as a data source for your Transformer model, the
associated .imr file (if one exists) is automatically listed as an available drill-through target.
Drill Through to Third Party OLAP Sources
You can set up drill through from PowerPlay to a range of drill targets when connected to a third
party OLAP source such as Hyperion Essbase. You can add definitions of drill-through targets in
the connection information when you use PowerPlay Connect to connect to a third party OLAP
source. You can use a PowerPlay report, or Cognos ReportNet or Cognos 8 report as a
drill-through target. For more information, see the PowerPlay Connect Help.
Enterprise Server Guide 63