Business Keys

When drill-through access is defined from a member to a relational value, the business key of the member is passed by default.

This means that your relational target parameter must be set up using the data item with a matching value, which is most often the business key data item. You can also choose to pass the caption of the source metadata item.

For example, employees are usually uniquely identified by an employee number, not by their name, because their name is not necessarily unique. When you drill through from a dimensional member to a relational data item, the value provided is the business key. Therefore, the parameter in the target report must be defined to accept a business key value. The exact logic used to define the business key value supplied depends on the cube vendor. For IBM® Cognos® PowerCubes, the business key value is the Source property defined for the level in IBM Cognos Transformer. IBM Cognos Series 7 Transformer PowerCubes pass the source value if the drill-through flag was enabled before the cube was built. Otherwise, the category code is used.

In IBM Cognos Report Studio, you can determine what the member business key is using an expression such as roleValue('_businessKey',[Camping Equipment]). This expression is case-sensitive.

SSAS 2005 multipart business keys are not supported in drill-through operations.

Tip: When other users run your drill-through report, you may not want them to be prompted for a business key. In Report Studio, you can build a prompt page with a text that is familiar to the users, but filters on the business key. Your IBM Cognos Framework Manager modeler can also set the Display Item Reference option for the Prompt Info property to use the business key when the data item is used in a prompt.