Using selection context variables in the drill through definition

[RHIBM]

Hi,

I have two reports I want to create a drill through definition between. I looked at the documentation on selection context on the ibm public boulder website but as to how to use these values in your Cognos report isn't really given. I have been able to setup the drill through definition. What I want to do is use the selection context to affect the next report when it is run.

I will give a little background information about the reports. The report that is the source report is a measure of builds vs the failures of those builds. So in our bar column graph we do this monthly. The user can select the date range they want to use. In the column graph then, our graph would say March 2012, April 2012, and then May 2012. This would be the x-axis categories if you will. For each month, April 2012 for example, the number of builds would be a column and then the failures would be another column. So April 2012 might have had 100 builds that month and the failures might have been 10. What I want to do is use that month, April 2012 and then just see the 10 failures in my next report that I drill through to.

The other report that I am drilling through to has the exact same prompt page as the source report. It asks for date range, product group, type of build, product, release and platform. Then what it does is lists all the builds with a more detailed format. But when using the drill through definition I want to restrict what it lists. I want to restrict in the next report only listed failures if the user used the column in the previous report for failures only. So as above I have my 10 failures bar graph. The user right clicks this and clicks Go To -> Drill Through Definition 1. My target report would then have a restricted date range of that month, April 2012, and would only list failures for this month, which would be the 10 that did.

Problem:

I don't know how to use the passed in context variable, which it calls Failures or Builds (in the case where it is just all the builds). I thought I could use it somehow by creating a data item and then assigning this data item as ?Failures?. This throws an error saying I'm using a parameter that doesn't exist. I thought then I might be able to use a new prompt in my target report that uses the context but that threw an API Cursor error. I don't really need to know how to fix these errors but mainly how to use the context parameter properly so I don't get these errors. In addition, I want to restrict the other report to only the month I've selected, April 2012. So the range in the other report would be April 1, 2012 - April 30, 2012 or if April was the last month selected it would use the last date in the range of the prompt page. But this is passed to the other report as Month which is a numerical representation of that month, like 66, which would equal April 2012.

Summary:

So to summarize a user runs the build graph report and selects March 1, 2012 - May 18, 2012. This prints out all the number of builds and then the failures in a bar graph form. They use the drill definition to go to the listed report for April 2012 and are using failures graph. So the report lists out the failures for all of April, which might be 10. They then go back and rerun the report but this time choose May and want all builds. So the drill through is run on the source report and in the target report it now shows all builds, including the failures, but also doesn't do the whole month of May, instead does May 1 - May 18th.

Questions:

I know the description was lengthy but I'm really having a hard time finding out how to use this effectively in Report Studio, between two Report Studio reports. Does anyone have any examples or experience that would detail what I am trying to do? Thank you very much if you do.