12. Click OK to accept and apply the settings.
The Cube Properties dialog closes, returning us to the PowerPlay Enterprise – Server Administration window. We see the newly inserted cube, sporting the new name we assigned earlier in the Cube Properties dialog, Warehouse Analysis Services Cube.
Let’s perform a test of our new cube by using the Open with Browser “preview” capability afforded us by PPES Administration. The icon for access to this feature.
13. Click the Open with Browser icon.
The browser initializes, and we are taken to the cube presentation. (Keep in mind our comments regarding prompted database / other logons, depending upon the level of integration of security. An example would be the appearance of a database login screen at this stage in the simple security scenario. Provide logon credentials to proceed in cases such as this, if applicable).
A successful test is thus indicated. Now that we have established connectivity to the Analysis Services Warehouse cube, we will overview PowerPlay Web reporting from the PPES cube.
Reporting via the “zero-footprint” web client that requires only a reasonably current browser (see the documentation for acceptable versions of standard browsers) on the client to access and report from our cube. The procedures in this article are presented using Internet Explorer, but the steps should be quite similar using Netscape.
1. Close Internet Explorer completely.
2. Open Internet Explorer again.
3. Type the following URL into the address field, substituting your server name for MOTHER (my server name) :
http://MOTHER/cognos/cgi-bin/ppdscgi.exe
4. Click Go, to the right of the URL.
The Table of Contents appears. We see the new Warehouse Analysis Services Cube that we have published, along with the sample cubes that are added in the typical installation of PPES and related applications.
5. Click the Warehouse Analysis Services Cube.
6. Provide database logon credentials, then log on, as applicable,
The data from the newly connected Warehouse Analysis Cube appears.
We can now get into analyzing our data from the browser interface. We can perform all the typical reporting capabilities that are available to us for a proprietary cube in PowerPlay Web, in addition to leveraging several extended capabilities that become available with the Analysis Services cube.
Let’s take a quick look at navigation in the Cognos PowerPlay Web Explorer interface at this point.
7. Touch the Store dimension label in the bottom left of the display.
A flyout menu appears, as shown, offering drilldown paths and other functionality.
8. Click USA -à WA on the flyout to drill down to the WA children.
The Washington cities appear in the row axis at left.
9. Touch the Measures label in the top left corner of the display to obtain a flyout menu that presents the available measures list.
10. Select Warehouse Sales from the measures list on the flyout menu.
11. Click the WA label at the bottom left of the display (at the bottom of the city row labels.
12. Select Action > Nest a Product.
We have nested the Product dimension within the Stores dimension at the cities category level, resulting in this display.
Now let’s make a couple of simple additions to presentation to make it a bit more useful from a financial analysis standpoint. We’ll create a calculated column to display the change in our totals between 1997 and 1998, and another calculated column to provide the percent change, both fairly common features in financial reporting.
13. Click the column axis dimension selector (currently Time in the blue “capsule” selector in the right upper corner or the display).
14. Select Action to display the flyout menu.