Trick to get Cascading filters for BEx BICS and filters in report body in Webi 4.x

[sateesh_kumar1]

Hi Team ,

 

Purpose : Get cascading filters in webi report created on BICS connection  and make use of element linking to give dashboard kind of appeal for filters

 

1.Cascading filters for BEx BICS

 

We know cascading filters with BEx BICS connection is not supported in BI 4.x .

 

We can do you a work around to get this done by including .UNX into our report .

 

* Create a universe in IDT on top of the Multiprovider / Cube used for the BEx .

 

* Create navigational paths as per requirement .Use this universe in report .

 

* Merge the objects from BEx with Objects(used in Navigational path) in report and use the merged objects as filters .

 

Since we will be using only few dimensions from universe , it must not hamper report performance .

 

Cons:

 

Overhead of using extra data source (Universe)  .

 

Pros :

 

we can leverage Drill functionality also by using Universe .

 

Note : This method must be executed precisely . Don't choose this option when you have so many characteristics used in report body because it may lead to create many detail objects against Merged objects .

 

To get text , we need to add the masters table in UNX and join with the Cube tables.


 

2 .To get the filters in report body

 

A) Use Horizontal tables and element linking to get cascading filters in report body to get cascading kind of usage .

 



In this example , 2 horizontal tables are used . 1 for District and other for Store . Apply element linking on District , dependency should be Store table and main table .Similarly apply element linking on Store table it should affect main table .

 

Cons :

* If you have more items then horizontal table expands to next other pages . Use this approach when you have only few values .

* Must be careful with clearing filters applied by using element linking on tables


 

Or

 

B) If you have more items ,Use Heat map and element linking to get cascading filters in report body to get cascading kind of usage .

 

Heat map generates next row (gives kind of feel ) .It depends on height and width of table .



Create a dummy variable with value 1 to use in heat maps.

 

Cons :

The size of heat map is static . So it may doesn't look good after applying filters . Design Heat maps carefully .

 

Hope this trick make sense .

2 Feb 17 Update : with BI 4.2 SP3 BW-BEx authoring universe , we can create business layer on BEx .

 

Thank you for reading :smile: