With the release of OBIEE 11g, a number of new features and functionality has been made available. I had been thinking for sometime, of creating a small series of blog posts addressing specifically such new functionality. I've had a lot of requests on Master-Detail linking and hence am going to start with that.

Lets start with Master-Detail Linking:

Master-detail linking of views allows us to establish a relationship between two or more views such that one view, called the master view, will drive data changes in the other (connected) views, called detail views. For e.g., lets assume that we have two views, one a table that shows dollars by region, the other a graph that shows dollars by brand with region on a section slider. Using the master detail linkage, we could connect the two in such a manner that on clicking a particular region, the region in the section slider of the graph as well as the data in the graph will change.

Lets understand how to set this up. Lets create a sample new analysis. I am using the SampleApp that is delivered with OBIEE 11g. I created a report with the following sample fields:

Lets designate the T05 Per Name Year as the column that will be the master driving our detail views. Click properties for T05 Per Name Year. On the interaction tab, set the value Primary Interaction to Send Master-Detail Events. We would also need to specify a channel for the detail views to be listening. In this example, well use 1. Multiple channels allows for creating multiple listener events in the dashboard/report.

Well create an analysis that includes a vertical bar chart and a pivot table. We create a graph and move the T05 Per Name Year to the sections and display as a slider:

Open the graph properties and edit to Listen to Master-Detail Events. The specified channel name match the name given in the column properties earlier.

We save our analysis and test the Master-Detail by selecting one of the year columns on the pivot table. The bar chart should reflect the selections made in the column.

Next Post: Creating Scorecards in OBIEE 11g