Working with the Master-Detail Report Feature of OBI 11g (pt 2)

In previous part of this series, I stepped through how to configure a Master-Detail report link when using the same analysis criteria to create the master and detail views. However, what if we want to create a totally independent detail view based on different criteria. Can we link the Master view from 1 analysis to the Detail view of another analysis?

Let’s see.

We will the Master view we created previously; so, we need to first create a new, independent Detail view and set our Event channel, the Event channel we used previously was MDS2.

Our event channel on our master view is driven by the “Per Name Qtr” so we need this column on our new detail view so that it can accept and act on the value being passed.

We will use a pie chart view for our detail view. With the view created, we can now set the Event channel through the view’s property window. We are using the slider again for the Quarter to make it easy to see the change.

With our new detail view created and configured to listen on the same channel as our master view we will add the view to our dashboard and check out if it works as we hope.

So, we have now shown that the detail view of a Master-Detail link does not need to come from the same report criteria as the master view.

I did come across an issue when using Master-Detail links and setting up a detail view to listen on the event channel, but configuring the layout of the detail view to not allow it to respond correctly. For example, I added a tabular view to my Master-Detail dashboard but placed the Qtr column in the “section” area of the layout. The report displayed all 4 quarters when I issued the event and my other detail views responded as expected. However when I tried issuing a subsequent event, none of the detail reports would respond. For the tabular view to respond correctly to an event, the column accepting the event must be placed in the “page” area of the view layout.

Here is a table containing specifics about views being used as detail views.

Types of Detail Views	Placement of Event Column
Graph	Prompt or Section area
Funnel graph	Prompt or Section area
Gauge	Prompt or Section area
Table	Page prompt area
Pivot Table	Page prompt area