Mastering OLAP Reporting: Meet Business Needs with Matrix Dynamics, Part II - Page 8

March 20, 2006

Verification: Preview the Report to Ascertain Effectiveness

Having added parameterization (with multivalue input capabilities) for Territorial Groups, and making alterations to our report file to meet business requirements for presenting independent matrices based upon the same geographical parameter selection at runtime, we will next perform a quick preview of the report to ascertain the effectiveness of our solution.

The report executes, with default parameter selections, and appears as partially shown in Illustration 49.

We see the report appear, executed by default with "All" parameter values selected for the parameter upon which we are focusing, Sales Territory Group. We can verify this, not only by the three independent matrix data regions that appear in the Preview pane, but also by taking a look at what selections have been made within the parameter picklist.

The picklist is exposed, as depicted in Illustration 50.

The report executes and returns one matrix view each for the Europe and Pacific Territory Groups, as depicted in Illustration 52.

And so, we see that our Report Parameter does, indeed, function correctly with multiple input values. Moreover, the need for the dynamic presentation of a standalone matrix for each of the picklist items we chose for Sales Territory Groups is met when the report executes.

We have corroborated the correct operation of the newly incorporated features. We present the results to the client information consumers, who express satisfaction that the changes do, indeed, meet specifications.

Conclusion ...

In this two-part article, we undertook the examination of a scenario where the dynamic nature of the Reporting Services matrix data region makes it the "object of choice" for enabling us to meet the expressed needs of a hypothetical group of information consumers. Part of the requirement was to replace an existing, but somewhat limited, matrix data region with a more robust matrix data region that returned identical data. In Part One, we began by creating the new matrix data region within the same .rdl file as the pre-existing data region upon which the new data region was to be based. This side-by-side contrast afforded us several advantages in a rapid development scenario, as we "converted" the original data region to a new data region, which would act as the foundation for innovative enhancements. Having both regions in physical parallel, made verification of comparability between the two easy, as we finished the first half of our examination by ensuring that both regions gave us identical results.

In this article, we further evolved the new matrix to meet the less intuitive facets of the business requirements of the information consumers with which we are working. First, we added the requested parameterization (with multivalue input capabilities) that they had requested for territorial groups, using a multivalue parameter. We then made further structural changes to the report, to meet the innovative business requirement for presenting independent matrices, based upon runtime selections within the new Sales Territory Group parameter. Throughout the two parts of our practice session, we discussed the results we sought to obtain within the development techniques that we exploited. Finally, we concluded with a preview of the report to ascertain the effectiveness of our solution.

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