Is it feasible to receive a "Warning"/"Error"/"Bad Data" notification if a user enters invalid prompt selections rather than waiting for the report to run and return no data?
Is it possible for the report to verify that based on filter criteria and data access there would be results provided before making the user wait and see a blank report?
Or at the very least, have the report return "No data found for the selected filter criteria. Please try again" rather than a blank report?
Check this discussion:
http://www.cognoise.com/community/index.php/topic,8565.0.html
I took a look at that discussion and not sure if that is what I'm looking for.
Yep, not really what you need. You need to make sure you reference the prompt values against occurence in the fact.
Example: When you have 1000 possible customers, perhaps 300 have ever bought anything. Instead of showing a prompt based on the full customer list , show a list cross-referenced with the fact keys for the customer.
Obviously , this does not prevent nil data returned as other prompts may still cause zero records returned.
The only true solution is to build a set of prompts that perform as a 100% cascade. In that case you can determine no data will be fetched cause somewhere in the cascade no entries can be selected..