Drill through access

Using drill through access, you can move from one report to another within a session while maintaining your focus on the same piece of data. For example, you select a product in a sales report and move to an inventory report about that product.

Drill through access helps you to build analytical applications that are bigger than a single report. drill through applications are a network of linked reports that users can navigate, retaining their context and focus, to explore and analyze information.

Drill through access works by defining the target report or object and then using information from the source report to filter the target. IBM® Cognos® Analytics can match data from the source to metadata in the target report, or you can define parameters in the target for greater control.

Note: In the dimensional reporting style, you can also enable drilling up and drilling down. For more information about drilling up and drilling down, see Create a drill-up and drill-down report.
Note: Drill through is not available for box plot and bullet visualizations.

What you should know

For a drill through link to work, it is necessary to know the following things:

  • The source
  • The target
  • How the data in the packages that contain these objects is related

    Depending on the underlying data, you may create a drill through definition and have IBM Cognos Analytics match the data (dynamic drill through) or create parameters in the target (parameterized drill through).

  • Whether to run the target report or to open it

    The drill-through target is usually a saved report definition. The report can be created in IBM Cognos Analytics - Reporting or IBM Cognos PowerPlay® Studio. The target of drill through access can also be a package that contains an IBM Cognos PowerCube, in which case a default view of the PowerCube is created.

  • Whether the users of the drill through link in the source report have the appropriate permissions to view or run the target report
  • If the target is being run, in what format to run it, and what filters to use on the target

If you do not want to run the target report on demand, you may link to a bookmark in the saved output instead of running the report. For more information, see the IBM Cognos Analytics Administration and Security Guide.

Sources and targets

In IBM Cognos Analytics, there are many different examples of source and target. For example, you can drill through in the following ways:

  • Between reports created in different packages against different data source types, such as from an analysis against a package that contains a PowerCube to a detailed report against a package based on a relational data source
  • From one existing report to another report using definitions created in Reporting
  • To and from a package built on a PowerCube
Tip: In the GO Data Warehouse (analysis) package, the Positions to Fill sample report is a drill through target report and the Recruitment Report sample report is a drill through source report.