whats the easiest way of linking a personal data file to a report

[DrSmyth]

HI,

I was just building BO a report based on a DB2 database and i had to bring in some lookup details from a spreadsheet, i just inserted a table, selected personal data source from the wizard and so on......

My question is what is the most effective way of combining such files, I was tempted to see if I could maybe use a linked universe....

Any ideas??

Dr

 

[BrianTyler]

I can see two ways.

First, if the look-up data is low-volume and does not change, use a CASE statement in the Universe, or an 'If else if' in an object.

If that is not appropriate, try having two data providers. Run your basic report and then add another table to the results. Set this new data to be populated by 'new data in a different way'. Run the query to get the data in from the spreadsheet.

Use the VIEW DATA icon (the rubik's cube) to associate the two data sources.

Slice and Dice should allow you to define your final results.

 

[DrSmyth]

Cheers Brian,

Pretty much as i expected, was hoping that i'd been missing some super effective method of combining external data sources..... Sadly this is not the case though... Oh Well!!!

One thing you might be able to shed some light on though.... Can you use a Case when else as a condition. Have tried in the past but seemed to keep getting error messages, didn't know if i had made an error whehe universe.....???

 

[BrianTyler]

For DB2, you can use a CASE statement in the universe when designing an object:

case when tx_type = 'Credit' then (0-tx_amount) else tx_amount end

or

case tx_code when 1 then 'PAY' when 2 then 'REFUND' when 3 then 'DISCOUNT' end