Dashboards, Applications & Business Intelligence

In the previous post, we saw how to create a simplistic dashboard portlet. Now we will spice it up by adding parameters and linking the parameter to the Portlet.

We will now add the product dimension as the dashboard parameter.

select p.description product_description
,      p.product_key product_key
from video5.product p

As shown below is the query and its corresponding results.

Now we click on the new parameter button

It will bring up the parameter editor dialog as shown below.

A parameter has two parts to it, one is the display column and the other is the internal reference column.

For e.g If you had a parameter showing Employee name, then the display column would be Employee name but the internal reference column would be the Employee_id or number.

Similarly for the Product dimension, we will display the description as the display column and the reference column would be the product key. You can have a parameter without any reference columns.

All the fields marked in yellow are required, you may opt to have the fields in green populated depending on the requirement.

And finally we need to provide the details for the from clause

Click on “Full Apply”

You should see the parameter on the dashboard as below

Now we have successfully added the parameter but there is no linkage between the Sales Fact Qlet and the product parameter.

The behaviour we are looking for is such that when we select any parameter value from the drop down, the sales fact should reflect only the selected parameter values.

Continued… Now we will create the link between the parameter and the portlet also known as “Wiring the Dashboard“