
5
Using Drill-Through
In This Chapter
About Drill-Through ..............................................................................................................161
Before You Start..................................................................................................................163
Using Drill-Through...............................................................................................................169
Disconnecting from Essbase....................................................................................................187
Integration Services is a product that works with Essbase and Spreadsheet Add-in for Microsoft
Excel. Essbase is a suite of tools and data integration services that serves as a bridge between
relational data sources and Essbase Server. Drill-through is one of these tools. Drill-through
enables you to view and customize spreadsheet reports that display data retrieved from relational
databases. Your organization must license Essbase for you to use the drill-through tool.
This chapter provides a brief overview of drill-through and a tutorial that guides you through
tasks for using drill-through. It also include a description of the sample database, spreadsheet
file, and drill-through report used in the tutorial.
About Drill-Through
Despite the benefits of the multidimensional database for storing analytic data, some data
elements required for analysis are better suited to the relational structure of a relational database.
The scope of data residing in an Essbase database is typically at a summary level, where data is
summarized and calculated for planning and analysis. Detailed, transactional data usually is not
examined during the planning and analysis of a business.
For example, you might use Essbase to analyze retail sales for the first quarter in the Eastern
region. Detailed data, such as a list of customers who purchased a particular product in a
particular size, is unnecessary during the normal course of analyzing business performance. As
you analyze sales results, however, you may want to view more detailed information. Drill-
through enables you to drill from the summarized and calculated data stored in Essbase Server
of your organization into detailed data stored in a relational database.
The database administrator predefines a data mapping for you from Essbase to the relational
source. For example, the Essbase members East, West, South, and Central might map to a field
called Region in a relational database. As you navigate through data in the spreadsheet, Essbase
can detect how the current data maps to the relational source. For example, suppose you select
cell G4 in Figure 171.
About Drill-Through
161
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