Lesson 13: Creating a Perspective

For models that contain many subject areas, for example, Sales, Manufacturing, and Supply data, it might be helpful to Report Builder users if you create perspectives of the model. A perspective is a sub-set of a model. Creating perspectives can make navigating through the contents of the model easier for your model users. In this lesson, you will create a perspective and add the entities that you want to the perspective. In addition, you will view your changes in Report Builder.

To create a perspective

  1. In the Tree view, right-click Model, point to New, and then click Perspective.

  2. In the Edit Perspective dialog box, click Clear All.

  3. Locate the Purchase Order Detail entity, and then select its check box.

    Notice that the Purchase Order Header and Product check boxes are selected but grayed out. If you clicked OK now, only the identifying attributes would be added to the perspective. For the purpose of this exercise, you are adding the entire contents of both entities to the perspective.

  4. To add all the attributes of the Purchase Order Header entity to the perspective, clear the check box, and then select the check box again.

  5. Locate the Product entity, clear the check box, and then select the check box again.

  6. Click OK.

    Your new perspective contains the Product and Purchase Orders entities and a few related roles and entities.

To rename the perspective

  1. To see the new perspective, scroll down to the bottom of the List view.

    The last item listed is called NewPerspective.

  2. Right-click NewPerspective, and then click Rename.

  3. Type Products and Purchases.

  4. On the File menu, click Save All.

To deploy the report model

  • On the Build menu, click Deploy AdventureWorks2008R2 Model.

To view report model changes in Report Builder 1.0

  1. Launch Report Builder.

  2. In the Getting Started pane, locate the AdventureWorks2008R2 model.

    Notice that there is a new plus (+) symbol next to the AdventureWorks2008R2 model.

  3. To view the perspective that you created, click the plus symbol.

  4. Select Products and Purchases.

  5. Click OK.

    When the Explorer pane appears, notice that the Product, Purchase Order Detail, and Purchase Order Header entities are listed.

  6. Drag the Product entity to the design area.

  7. In the Entities list, select Purchase Order Details.

  8. In the Fields list, select Total Received Qty and drag the field to the right of the Name field.

    In the Fields list, notice that Sum Fulfilled Qty and Fulfilled Qty are listed at the bottom of the list for the Purchase Order Details entity. Note that your Sum Fulfilled Qty is shown at the top level with Fulfilled Qty nested below it.

  9. In the Fields list, select Sum Fulfilled Qty and drag the field to the right of the Total Received Qty field.

  10. On the Report toolbar, click Run Report.

    As you move your mouse pointer around the report, notice that it changes shape. You can click on any content in the Name, Total Received Qty, or Sum Fulfilled Qty columns.

  11. In the Sum Fulfilled Qty column, click the 62500 for Decal 1 row.

    The Purchase Order Details clickthrough report appears. Note that the second Modified Data column no longer appears and that the Received Qty and Rejected Qty fields are added.

To view report model changes in Report Builder (Report Builder 1.0)

  1. In Report Manager, click Report Builder.

    Note

    You can also use the standalone version of Report Builder 3.0.

  2. In New Report or Dataset dialog box, click Blank Report, and then click Create.

  3. In the Report Data pane, click New, and then click Data Source.

  4. In the Data Sources Properties dialog box, verify that Use a shared connection or report model is selected, and then click Browse.

  5. In the Select Data Source dialog box, in the Name text box, type the URL: https://localhost/reportserver and click Open.

  6. Expand the Models folder, click AdventureWorks2008R2, and then click Open.

  7. Click OK.

    A data source with the default name, DataSource1, is added to the Report Data pane.

    Right click DataSource1.

  8. Verify that the Data source option specifies AdventureWorks2008R2 and click Query Designer.

  9. In the Choose Perspective dialog box, select Products and Purchases.

  10. Click OK.

    When the Explorer pane appears, notice that the Product, Purchase Order Detail, and Purchase Order Header entities are listed.

  11. Drag the Product entity to the design area.

  12. In the Entities list, select Purchase Order Details.

  13. In the Fields list, select Total Received Qty and drag the field to the right of the Name field.

    In the Fields list, notice that Sum Fulfilled Qty and Fulfilled Qty are listed at the bottom of the list for the Purchase Order Details entity. Note that your Sum Fulfilled Qty is shown at the top level with Fulfilled Qty nested below it.

  14. In the Fields list, select Sum Fulfilled Qty and drag the field to the right of the Total Received Qty field.

  15. To view your report, click Run.

  16. In the Sum Fulfilled Qty column, click the 62500 for Decal 1 row.

    The Purchase Order Details clickthrough report appears. Note that the second Modified Data column no longer appears and that the Received Qty and Rejected Qty fields are added.

    Note

    You cannot create clickthrough reports using Report Builder 3.0. However, you can create the clickthrough reports in Report Builder 1.0, and then update the report using Report Builder 3.0.

Next Steps

Congratulations, you have successfully completed the Refining a Report Model in Model Designer tutorial.