Edit 'no value' in crosstabs - Cognos Analytics dashboard - cognos-bi

Is there a way to edit the 'no value' in the cells of a Cognos Analytics (11.0.13) dashboard crosstab visualization? I would like to change it into 0.
Thanks in advance.

My answer consists of two parts.
The first is of some techniques to do what you want to do. The second is of a caution about you really really need to understand the data to know if the values should be reported as zero rather than null.
Part the first
It depends on your data source and the provenance of the object.
If you are using a data module you can set a setting for the query item to replace the null with a zero.
If you are using an expression you could use the coalesce function to substitute a value then the source value is null. This could be used in place of whatever measure you are trying to use in your chart.
For example coalesce ( {some query item}, 0)
Coalesce takes any number of parameters and will return the value of those in the leftmost position unless it is null and then return the value for the next parameter, unless it is also null etc.
I'm assuming that you are using a file directly in the dashboard. My advice is that it might be a good idea to put it into a module, do your modelling there so that it is available in all your dashboards and reports and you can use it in conjunction with other data sources. Also, if you have a multi-sheet or multi-file source you have the ability to know how the relationships between the sheets were defined and correct them if need be. I have not had entirely good experiences with the soi disant smart relationship generation in multi-sheet files but you're using 11.0.13 and I don't think it's in there. (I'm using 11.1.5)
Part the second
For purists out there: A null is not a zero. There is a difference between a null and a zero. It's difficult for people without maths degrees (such as me, who trained as an accountant) to understand that but I have a fairly simple example which I think can show where a value is null and where it could be truly zero.
Assume that you are doing a month by month sales report for a car dealer. This time last year (i.e. in April 2019) you could be selling 2019 model year cars and some 2018 model year cars. You were not selling any 2020 model year cars because they were not released yet. In that case, the value ought to be null. Over time the number of sales of 2018 year cars would possibly be 0 as you would no longer have them in inventory to sell. In this pretend report I have a sale of 1 2018 car in February of this year.
Now, your report for 2019 will have nulls for the sales of 2020 year cars before the autumn (I think that's when they usually release new cars).
It is possible that the number of sale for April this year will be zero.

#E. van Dongen,
There is a way to set 'Missing value characters' property to '0' on Col Format option in CA 11.1.5 version. This option may be available in CA 11.0.13 as well.

Related

MDX Retention Rate

I am new to OLAP and I have a pretty tricky assignment that I am not sure is possible in MDX:
I work for an insurance company and I have been asked to provide a Retention Rate calculation to compare the number of policies we have kept from one time period to another.
The data in our fact table consists of a month-end snapshots of each our policies and there is a flag to indicate whether they are currently active at that time.
So, in plain English, the steps to find the Retention Rate from December 2014 to December 2015 would be:
Get the set of active policy IDs as of December 2014 (set #1)
Get the set of active policies as of December 2015 that have the SAME policy ID as set #1 (set #2)
Divide set #2 by set #1 to get the Retention Rate
I am just not sure if it is possible to compare specific IDs from two different sets like that in MDX.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
This isn't something one would normally use MDX for, since it involves a condition at the detail level (PolicyID), and MDX is all about data in aggregate.
However, if you are willing and able to add a flag to your fact table/view it can be done. To address your exact question, you could simply add a bit (or int) flag into your fact table. For each record, the flag would be true (1) if the PolicyID is active now AND was active a year ago, and false (0) if it was not.
Then you can add a new measure to your cube that counts "retained policies", which is just the sum of the flag you just added, and then you can easily divide one measure by another.
If your needs are more complex than this one instance, there might be ways to add more complex data, but the point is that you have to create a way for your cube to be able to compare aggregations.

Table design for payments

I have a table that holds data for a person who is on a project. The table has a Start date field a nullable End date field. So, a person is on a project from Start to End.
At the moment, they are always billable to the project. But I now have a new requirement that, for a period, they can be non-billable, yet, still working on the project. So, they have been assigned to the project, and are working, but for some reason, the client isn't billed for part of the period they are assigned, or maybe billed at a lower rate.
My idea is to have an exclusion type table, linked to the person assignment table which would have a start date, and end date, and a Rate column, which could be set to zero for no-charge, or else, works as an override value for a period.
Does this seem like valid design? As the person is billed 95% of the time, and probably will never had any exclusion, it makes more sense to me to have an exclusion table.
If anyone has an idea of how to do this better, it would be great.
At the moment, I also have a 'calendar' table, which I join to based on the start/end date of the person's schedule to get the daily rate. So, I could then join to the exclusion date as well, to see if there is an override of the rate?
Issues I might find with my design, are a lot of the joins are based on:
ON DateValue BETWEEN Start AND End
And I am not sure they're the most efficient joins.
If the exception could be one or more period of times (one-to-many) for one project then your design using an exclusion table is the best design.
Example:
June 1, 2013 to June 30, 2013
Exclusion:
June 9, 2013 - 0 Rate
June 25 to 27 - 30% of Original Rate
However, if the exclusion is possible and can only be a maximum of ONE single period (or one-to-one type of relationship) then you might instead put it on the same fields as other fields on project table.
Example:
June 1, 2013 to June 30, 2013
Exclusion:
June 9, 2013 - 0 Rate
I would use this "exclusion" table as single storage for person-project occupation data. In case when person is assigned to project one time without changes in rate, you will have one record in this table. In other cases you will have a history of rate changes in this table.
It looks like your are allowing discount on standard rate to the customer for specific period. for such case, you can set the rate to be negative eg.-$100/hours for the duration to set resource rate for free in your discount/exclusion table. you can find the final rate for that resource for particular period by adding your discount amount and standard amount to get net amount. In your design, you have already mentioned the relation will be made between exclusion and person assignment table. your design will allow to show what discount has been given to the customer. This approach is ok when your are adjusting the billing for exception cases.
In case, your are trying to do correction in project billing, IMO, you should have separate entries in person assignment table for each rate with the duration.
While generating Invoice to the customer, you can show adjusted discounted rate or new revised billing based on the correction.

Aggregation of an MDX calculated measure when multiple time periods are selected

In my SSAS cube, I've several measures defined in MDX which work fine except in one type of aggregation across time periods. Some don't aggregate (and aren't meant to) but one does aggregate but gives the wrong answers. I can see why, but not what to do to prevent it.
The total highlighted in the Excel screenshot below (damn, not allowed to include an image, reverting to old-fashion table) is the simplest case of what goes wrong. In that example, 23,621 is not the grand total of 5,713 and 6,837.
Active Commitments Acquisitions Net Lost Commitments Growth in Commitments
2009 88,526 13,185 5,713 7,472
2010 92,125 10,436 6,837 3,599
Total 23,621 23,621
Active Commitments works fine. It is calculated for a point in time and should not be aggregated across time periods.
Acquisitions works fine.
[Measures].[Growth in Commitments] = ([Measures].[Active Commitments],[Date Dimension].[Fiscal Year Hierarchy].currentMember) - ([Measures].[Active Commitments],[Date Dimension].[Fiscal Year Hierarchy].prevMember)
[Measures].[Net Lost Commitments] = ([Measures].[Acquisitions] - [Measures].[Growth in Commitments])
What's happening in the screenshot is that the total of Net Lost Commitments is calculated from the total of Acquisitions (23,621) minus the total of Growth in Commitments (which is null).
Aggregation of Net Lost Commitments makes sense and works for non-time dimensions. But I want it to show null when multiple time periods are selected rather than an erroneous value. Note that this is not the same as simply disabling all aggregation on the time dimension. The aggregation of Net Lost Commitment works fine up the time hierarchy -- the screenshot shows correct values for 2009 and 2010, and if you expand to quarters or months you still get correct values. It is only when multiple time periods are selected that the aggregation fails.
So my question is how to change the definition of Net Lost Commitments so that it does not aggregate when multiple time periods are selected, but continues to aggregate across all other dimensions? For instance, is there a way of writing in MDX:
CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[Net Lost Commitments]
AS (iif([Date Dimension].[Fiscal Year Hierarchy].**MultipleMembersSelected**
, null
, [Measures].[Acquisitions] - [Measures].[Growth in Commitments]))
ADVthanksANCE,
Matt.
A suggestion from another source has solved this for me. I can use --
iif(iserror([Date Dimension].[Fiscal Year Hierarchy].CurrentMember),
, null
, [Measures].[Acquisitions] - [Measures].[Growth in Commitments]))
CurrentMember will return an error when multiple members have been selected.
I didn't understand much of the first part of the question, sorry...but at the end I think you ask how to detect if multiple members from a particular dimension are in use in the MDX.
You can examine either of the two axes as a string, and use that to form a true/false test. Remember you can use VBA functions in Microsoft implementations of MDX.
I suggest InStr(1, SetToStr(StrToSet("Axis(1)")), "whatever") = 0 as a way to craft the first argument of your IIF.
This gets the set of members on axis number one, converts it to a string, and looks to see if a certain string is present (it returns the position of that string within the other). Zero means not found (so it returns true). You may need to use axis zero instead, or maybe check both.
To see if multiple members from the same dimension were used, the test string above would have to be more complicated. You want to know if whatever occurs once or twice. You could test if the first occurance of the string was at the same position as the last occurance (by searching backwards); though that could also mean the string wasn't found at all:
IIF(
InStr(1, bigstring, littlestring) = InStrRev(bigstring, littlestring),
'used once',
'used twice or not at all'
)
I came across this post while researching a solution for my own issue with grand totals of calculated measures over time when filters are involved. I think you could have fixed the calculations instead of suppressing them by using dynamic sets. This worked for me.

Rename Attribute value in Time Dimension in SSAS

I am working on SQL Analysis service to provide ad hoc reporting in my application. I have created a time dimension to use in my cube. It has some predefined attributes. e.g. Month of year. It is having values like Month 1, Month 2, etc. while I want January for Month 1, February for Month 2, etc...
Can any one please suggest me some work around it??
As I am newbie to SSAS, Sorry if I am missing something very silly....
When you work with attributes in SSAS, there are two properties that affect the members of that attribute. The first property - which is set by default when you create the attribute - is KeyColumn. The column that you use here determines how many members are in the attribute because processing generates a SELECT DISTINCT statement based on this column. It's a good idea if you use an integer value here for better performance.
It sounds like perhaps you have a month number for your attribute here, which is good. Except that you want to display a month name. In that case, you set the NameColumn property with the column in your data source view that contains the month name. This produces the label that you see when you browse the dimension.
That said, it's usually not a good idea to have just a month number or month name because you probably want to create a hierarchy to roll up months by year and you won't be able to do that with just a month name. I wrote a blog post describing how to set up a date dimension that might help you: http://blog.datainspirations.com/2011/05/11/sqlu-ssas-week-dimension-design-101-2/

variable column names in sql table valued function

Suppose that I am using a sql server to keep track of all my personal expenses and that I am tagging everything with a date and a category.
This allows me to do things like aggregate monthly expenses per category and look at the last several months of expenses with each category as a row and the most recent months as columns.
What I am stuck on is the fact that I am having to name the columns things like "most recent month", "previous month", and "2 months ago". I would really prefer to be able to name them something like "Jan10", "Feb10", or "Mar09" or something like that and have them update automatically every month.
Calculating the names is simple enough, but I'm not sure how to get sql server to interpret a formula or join or anything like that as the alias for a column.
Any insights on this one?
What I am stuck on is the fact that I am having to name the columns things like "most recent month", "previous month", and "2 months ago". I would really prefer to be able to name them something like "Jan10", "Feb10", or "Mar09" or something like that and have them update automatically every month.
That approach means creating multiple columns, which will eventually hit the limit. In SQL Server, that's 1,024 for a non-wide and 30,000 for a wide table ...
A better approach is to store the date, and section/partition the data in the query as needed. Because Jan 10th is going to have a different value for 2009, 2010, 2011, etc...
It looks to me like you're trying to store data the same way you want to view it. That is not a very good way of going about it. I would suggest the following:
Your table should have the essentials, say:
Store (This could become its own table, but we can leave it as a string)
Category
Amount Spent
Date
Then, once you have this data, you can report on it. This report will do the heavy lifting, and will be dynamic in the sense that you don't need to hardcode values. The following is just an example, and I can't promise the syntax is even correct.
SELECT Store, SUM(CASE WHEN Date > GETDATE() - 14 THEN AmountSpent ELSE 0 END)
FROM YourTable
GROUP BY Store
The above will give you all money spent at each store in the last 14 days. This window will be "sliding", every time you run it, it will look back two weeks; no hardcoding.
You may wish to acquaint with Entity-attribute-value model and approaches.