Is there a way to apply different dimension filters to two measures

Question

Dear all,
Let's say I have a report that goes something like below:
TIME DOLLARS FORECAST DOLLARS
JAN 99999 99999
FEB 99999 99999
MAR 99999 99999
APR 99999 99999
MAY 99999 99999
DEC 99999 99999
What I would like to achieve is this:
TIME DOLLARS FORECAST DOLLARS
JAN 99999
FEB 99999
MAR 99999
APR 99999
MAY 99999
DEC 99999
i.e. DOLLARS displayed only for first two months (or whatever. May be because the report is being run in March). And for rest of the year I display forecast.
Please note that I do not want to achieve the above with the help of "formatting".
What I am looking for is "an ability to apply two separate filters (for the same dimension) on two different measures in the report". i.e. in the above case DOLLARS has a filter of JAN to FEB; and FORECAST has a filter of MAR to DEC.
How can I do this in Discoverer? Any hint/ pointers are greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
pxsheth.

Answer 1

Hey there.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say you don't want to achieve with help of formatting.
See if this suggestion makes sense - and doesn't fall into that formatting camp.
The only way to add a column in Discoverer is via calculations.
So if you have a column called dollars and one called forecast_dollars then I would think you'd want to determine the month of the run date - or ask user what month they want to run it for.
You don't say how you determine forecast_dollars but let's just say all the columns come from data.
So could you not have a condition that brings back the data for a date range (ie: current year or ask user for from / to dates). Then:
calc_dollars calculation: equals the dollar amount brought back from the query if record month <= current month else 0.
calc_forecast_dollars calculation: equals the dollar amount brought back from the query if record month > current month else 0.
So in practice:
table A has 3 columns: time, dollars, forecast_dollars
condition: where time between from_date_parameter and to_date_parameter
calc_dollars: SUM(case when time <= SYSDATE then dollars else 0 end)
calc_forecast_dollars: SUM(case when time > SYSDATE then forecast_dollars else 0 end)
That gets you a time column, a dollars columns and a forecast_dollars column.
In your example, it appears you want forecast_dollars in the same column. I'm assuming this is incorrect but if you wanted it, you'd just have one calculation such as:
calc_bucks: (case when time <= SYSDATE then dollars else forecast_dollars end)
So, is this the kind of thing you want or would this be more formatting?
Russ