Easy way to migrate Drill-Through definitions (PP7->RS8 to AS8 -> RS8)

[AlanMacNeill]

OKay...so...I'm hip deep in a project to migrate from PP7 to Analysis Studio.  A previous employee (no longer here) already migrated our reporting environment to Report Studio 8.

We've already gone through and replicated all of our old bookmarks as analyses (moderate pain, but worth the effort for change control anyhow)...but somehow we are having issues with the drill throughs.

We have a number of cubes that have drill throughs to currently existing R.S. 8 reports, and they work in the old environment.  However, we have a few problems with the migration...

1.  Is there a relatively easy way to mine the .cfx files to ensure we have a list of all cubes that have drill-through definitions?  Cognos on a Windows server, I have file system access, so searches or other greplike tools can be in play.  I'm just not good enough to figure out what the relevant strings would be.

2.  Doing a test mapping, the drill through report is not returning any values.  Looking at the passed parameters, it is unclear to me, is it passing the "use" value or the "display" value?  Can I adjust that somewhere?  I get the impression from reading other posts that I may have to change the logic we are using on our month filter, as in 7.x we had to convert to a string, where in 8, we need it to remain as a month.  Am I interpreting that correctly?

[MFGF]

2.  Doing a test mapping, the drill through report is not returning any values.  Looking at the passed parameters, it is unclear to me, is it passing the "use" value or the "display" value?  Can I adjust that somewhere?  I get the impression from reading other posts that I may have to change the logic we are using on our month filter, as in 7.x we had to convert to a string, where in 8, we need it to remain as a month.  Am I interpreting that correctly?

Drillthroughs in Cognos 8 take the MUN (Member Unique Name) and pass that through.  If the drill target is a relational report, the MUN is simplified to the Category Code, and this is passed through.  Sometimes the Category Codes are not appropriate (where non-unique IDs exist within a dimension and Transformer has enforced uniqueness by adding tilde and an integer value to non-unique codes).  In this situation, you can switch the behaviour to pass the Source Value instead - this can be done by ticking the Drill Throughs option in the cube properties in Transformer, then rebuilding the cube.

For something like a Month drill-through, the code passed is usually the range of dates that makes up the month eg 01012010-31012010.  An appropriate filter on the target report would be along the lines of [Order date] in_range ?MonthParam?.  The important piece of the puzzle is that the [Order date] item in this example must be a date datatype.

Hope that helps!

MF.

[AlanMacNeill]

  In this situation, you can switch the behaviour to pass the Source Value instead - this can be done by ticking the Drill Throughs option in the cube properties in Transformer, then rebuilding the cube.

I go into the drill-through options in Transformer and I don't see any options.  I *suspect* this is because we're still using a 7 version of Transformer (7.4.3034.0.0 to be specific).  Am I being dense, or are these options an 8.x thing?

If they are an 8.x thing, is there anything I can do to affect this while still in 7.x transformer (long story, don't ask...not my decision)?

[MFGF]

It shouldn't make any difference.  There should still be a Drill-Thoughs tab in the cube properties in Transformer 7, and this should have an 'Allow Drillthroughs' checkbox.  If this is checked, the Source Value is passed in any C8 drillthrough.  If it is not checked, the Category Code is passed in any C8 drillthrough.

No drill targets are required to be defined within the cube properties - these are all set up within the C8 authoring environment.

Regards,

MF.