Measures & Drilling - Universe Variables

[Former Member]

Post Author: ctorrey

CA Forum: WebIntelligence Reporting

I am designing a universe with a number of fairly simple measures and a few more complex measures that are, essentially, variables based on these simple or base measures. Iu2019m hoping someone has had this same issue and was able to reach a reasonable resolution.

Please consider this example:

Existing Call Center Measures based on fact table:

Talk Time (TT)

After Call Work Time (ACW)

Number Calls Handled (NCH)

Computed Measure (i.e., universe variable):

Handle Time per Call Handled: (TT+ACW) / NCH

When I create the measure in the Universe, it computes things properly. However, when we perform drill up/down, the result reflects an u201Caverage of an averageu201D rather than pre-calculating/aggregating the components of the measure.

I know I can create report variables, but this results in measures being located in two places and opens the door for mis-use/interpretation of corporate measures. I would prefer to define all of these measures in the universe and expose them through the Data tab in the query editor.

[Former Member]

Post Author: jsanzone

CA Forum: WebIntelligence Reporting

ctorrey,

There is no solution to this if you are going to permit drill up/down on a report. If you can eliminate any drill activity, then you are safe performing the calculation in the database server as you have done. If you are going to permit drill on the reports, then the solution is to create a local variable to the report (and eliminate the object you've created in the universe as it's going to be worthless in drill enabled project). There are other BI vendors out in the wild that handle this aspect deftly, however, BusinessObjects is not one of those vendors (right or wrong, this is what you have to work with in a BusinessObjects environment).