Understanding dynamic drill-through

Drill-through is the process of navigating from a source resource, such as a report or a PowerCube, to a target resource. To preserve context during navigation, the values selected in the source resource are usually mapped to parameters defined in the target resource.

Dynamic drill-through extends the current drill-through functionality by providing another mechanism to communicate the context for the drill-through operation.

Dynamic drill-through uses the values selected in source resource to dynamically create filters that filter the information that appears in the target resource. Dynamic drill-through allows applications to be more fluid and simpler to maintain because parameters do not need to be defined in the target resource.

This part contains reference information for three specifications used during a dynamic drill-through operation: the selection context, defined by the SelectionContext.xsd schema, the drill-through specification defined by the DrillThroughSpecification.xsd schema, and the edit specification, defined by the EditSpecification.xsd schema.

During a dynamic drill-through operation, the values selected in the source resource are represented in the selection context. The selection context is a dynamically created XML document that represents the values selected. The selection context also contains information about the values that are dependent on the values selected to provide additional opportunities to filter the values in the target resource. For selection context XML samples, see Using Selection Context. For the SelectionContext.xsd schema reference, see Selection Context Reference.

The drill-through specification identifies the target resource and the action to be performed on that resource, as well as the rules that define how the selection context should be converted to a form that can be consumed by the target resource. The drill-through specification is defined in the specification parameter of the drillPath object. For drill-through specification XML samples, see Drill-through specification examples. For the DrillThroughSpecification.xsd schema reference, see Drill-through specification reference.

The edit specification defines actions, such as filters, to perform on the target resource. For edit specification XML samples, see Edit specification examples. For the EditSpecification.xsd schema reference, see Edit specification reference.