There are three main types of placeholders:
Dimension Placeholders
Dimension placeholders show information about the currently sliced dimension members in a selected view on the workboard. Dimension placeholders can be chosen from one of the three dimension lists:
View Dimensions
The dimensions on the view axes, and those sliced in the view.
All Dimensions
All of the view’s dimensions displayed in tree format.
Example
Some of the placeholders of the Customers dimension in the “Sales Results for Third Quarter” (Foodmart-Sales cube) view are:
%[Customers]% Returns the name of the currently sliced member in the Customers dimension.
%%[Customers]%% Returns the names of all currently sliced members in the Customers dimension.
%[Customers] Caption% Returns the caption of the currently sliced member in the Customers dimension.
Attributes
If a dimension contains attributes, you can display the placeholders relating to those attributes. For example, the Customers dimension in the “Sales Results for Third Quarter” view contains the following attributes: Education, Gender, Marital Status, Member Card, Yearly Income. The placeholders for these attributes are:
%[Customers]![Education]%
%[Customers]![Gender]%
%[Customers]![Marital Status]%
%[Customers]![Member Card]%
%[Customers]![Yearly Income]%
Static placeholders
This type of dimension placeholder displays the name of the placeholder as is. For example, the static placeholder [Promotion Media].[Media Type] returns ‘[Promotion Media].[Media Type]’.
Dimension Types
Necto provides a series of placeholders that refer to dimension types. The following table describes the available types:
|
Dimension type |
Describes a dimension that… |
|
Accounts |
contains an account structure with parent-child relationships. |
|
BillOfMaterials |
represents a material/component breakdown. The parent-child relationship implies a parent composed of its children. |
|
Channel |
contains information about a distribution channel. |
|
Currency |
contains currency information. |
|
Customers |
contains customer information. The lowest level represents individual customers. |
|
Geography |
contains a geographic hierarchy. |
|
Measure |
contains measures. |
|
Organization |
represents the reporting structure of an organization. |
|
Other |
is of the default dimension type, which is used for dimensions that are not time dimensions or measure dimensions. |
|
Products |
contains product information. The lowest level represents individual products. |
|
Promotion |
contains information about marketing and advertising promotions. |
|
Quantitative |
contains quantitative elements (for example, income level or number of children). |
|
Rates |
contains different types of rates (for example, buy, sell or discounted). |
|
Scenario |
contains different business scenarios. |
|
Unknown |
with an unknown or unspecified type. |
|
Utility |
contains only calculated members. This type of dimension is usually used for data visualization techniques. |
The placeholders of dimension types are in the following format:
%[DimType X]%
where X is the dimension type.
Parameter Placeholders
Some types of parameters defined in the navigation component become available as placeholders. These placeholders are listed under Parameter Placeholders, and they are in the following format: [[Param1]]. Param1 is replaced by the value selected for this parameter in the navigation component.
For example, for a parameter of Numeric Range type whose name is “Numeric Range 1”, the placeholder will be [[Numeric Range 1]]. Numeric Range 1 will be replaced by the selected value.
For a parameter of Pick List type, there will be two placeholders, one for the Value - [[Param1]] - and the other for the Name - [[Param1]]!Caption.
Note that parameters of Dimension type appear both in the Parameter Placeholders tab and in Dimension Placeholders.
Other Placeholders
These placeholders supply general information:
|
Placeholder |
Returns… |
|
%Username% |
the name of the user currently logged into Necto |
|
%CubeName% |
the unique name of the cube |
|
%DBName% |
the database name |
|
%ServerName% |
the server name |
|
%CubeDate% |
the cube update date (as a number) |
|
%CubeDateFormatted% |
the formatted cube date |
|
%SchemaDate% |
the cube schema update date |
|
%Slicer Set% |
all the currently sliced members as an MDX set |
|
%SchemaDateFormatted% |
the cube schema update date (formatted) |