COGNOS Business Intelligence Series 7

Chapter 5: Provide Drill-through Access
Steps to Set up Drill-through Access
1. In Upfront, create a NewsBox using the name specified in the drill-through definitions for the
source cube.
For information about creating NewsBoxes, see the Cognos Web Portal User Guide.
2. In PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration, click a server.
3. From the Edit menu, click Properties, and click the Folder Settings tab.
4. If you are drilling through to a report, in the Upfront NewsBox for Reports box, type the
name of the NewsBox containing the report, preceded by two slashes (//).
Tip: You must specify NewsBox as
• a fully qualified path from the root directory, such as //NewsIndex/Finance/Reports.
• the path below the root directory, such as Finance/Reports or /Finance/Reports. This is
equivalent to //NewsIndex/Finance/Reports.
• // equivalent to the root directory, such as //NewsIndex.
5. If you are drilling through to a cube, in the Upfront NewsBox for Cubes box, type the name
of the NewsBox containing the cube.
6. Click the Cube Settings tab.
7. In the PowerPlay Cubes box, under Drill Through, click Enabled.
8. In the PowerPlay Web Target box, under Drill Through, type the URL of the PowerPlay
server.
9. In the PowerPlay Web Drill Through NewsBox box, type the name of the NewsBox
containing the cube or report.
10. Click Apply.
11. Add the source cube to PowerPlay Enterprise Server:
• From the Insert menu, click Cube.
• In the Name box, type a name for the cube or report.
• In the Cube Source box, click the ellipsis (...) button.
• Select an .mdc file with a drill-through target that includes the name of the NewsBox and
click OK.
Tip: You define drill-through targets using Transformer when you build a cube. For more
information, see Step-by-Step Transformer. For information about defining drill-through
targets in third party OLAP sources, see the PowerPlay Connect Help.
12. Publish the target cubes to Upfront:
• Click one or more cubes that you want to use as drill-through targets.
Tip: Drill-through targets are case-sensitive. For drill-through access to work, the names
of the target cubes must match the case of the names specified in the drill-through
definition in the source cube.
• From the Tools menu, click Publish to Portal.
A message tells you that the items were successfully published to Upfront.
Drill Through to Cognos Query
To set up drill through from PowerPlay Web to a Cognos Query report, you must perform the
following tasks:
• In Cognos Query, save the query you want to drill through to as an .iqd file.
• In Transformer, specify the drill-through targets (.iqd files) for your measures or PowerCubes.
You must then update all affected cubes (p. 62).
• In PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration, enable drill through and specify the required
URL to start Cognos Query.
Notes
• When a drill through is executed, it passes the current dimension line settings as filter
parameters. If the .iqd file cannot apply these filters, due to incorrect column labeling, the drill
through may return unexpected results.
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