Passing filters (not parameters) to drill through reports

[sbelli]

My past use of drilldowns that I have used have been simple since it was merely obtaining the details of the counts derived from input parameters on the prompt page.

I've been working on a complicated report for my employer in which the specifications really were designed without knowing the limitations of Cognos. The main report(s) are not typical crosstab or list reports because in addition to the prompts, each row and column required a different set of hard-coded filters because the filter data could not be derived directly from a database field but from several fields.

So, I have reports with 60 different queries (one for each box on the report) all with different filters because of the requirements.

The business wants drill-through reports for these. However, due to the way the results had to be derived, I cannot simply pass parameters from the prompt page to the drill down. I need to either pass the filters themselves or somehow have the data on the filters passed as parameters.

Ultimately, if I cannot pass the hard-coded values used in the filters, I'd have to create separate drill down reports for each block (ie., 60 different drill down reports). I want to avoid this since there are a total of 6 different reports (which would require 360 drill downs).

The layout of the drilldowns is exactly the same, but the filters required to get the data are quite different.

Is this possible? Or are there any other suggestions on how to apply the same exact filters to the drilldown without having to explicitly reiterate them in the drilldown (again, requiring mulitple versions of the same drilldown)?

[sbelli]

To simplify things, I realized I could create parameters within the filters being used in the drill down. But the issue still will be passing hard-coded values to those parameters (like ?prmStartAge?" = 0 and ?prmEndAge? = 40).

Even doing this, I would require several varations on the drilldown due to different filters required. But it would at least reduce the number of drilldowns required.

When doing the drilldown definitions it only seems to allow you to pass a data value (coming from a query) or a parameter value. Is there not a way to pass a hard-coded value?

[RKMI]

Hi,

I'm not entirely getting what you are trying to achieve, I think it would make more sense with the report spec to understand what it is that you are trying to do.

I'm just throwing out an idea, I have also made similar hard coded filter based queries before and then used conditional variables to display the nessessary content but, I'm again not to sure if recommending you using variables will solve your need especially if you have 60+ queries, it might be a combination of spliting the report out into detail and summary with conditional variable based on what is generate in the summary it would take you to a conditional based detailed report.

I hope this makes sense, you send a PM if you like me to look at your report spec.

Thanks,
RK

[sbelli]

RKMI, thanks for the reply. Doing some more searching on the 'net, I think I found a viable solution that I should have thought of myself.

I simply added new data items in the query that is used for the aggregate total on the main report and hardcoded the values in the expressions.

For example, I just added a data item called Age2 and made the value of it 40. And now I can pass this to the drilldown. I'll have to do this for each of the 60 queries, but it will make it so I should be able to only have two or three variations of the drilldown instead of one for each of the previous 60.