Selecting Data, 3 of 13

Limiting to a Simple List of Values

A common way of selecting data is to limit a dimension to a value or list of values. When limiting dimension values, you can substitute a dimension surrogate for its dimension. The simplified syntax for using the LIMIT command in this way is shown below.

LIMIT dimension TO values

The values argument can consist of any combination of:

Dimension values, expressed as literal values separated by commas, or as a multiline text expression, each line of which is a value of the dimension.
Ranges of dimension values, expressed as value1 TO value2.
Integer values that represent the logical positions of dimension values, expressed as comma-separated integers.
Ranges of integer values that represent the logical positions of dimension values, expressed as value1 TO value2.
Valuesets.

Suppose that you want a report of footwear sales in Boston for January through March 1995. The following commands limit the appropriate dimensions and request the report.

LIMIT month TO 'JAN95' 'FEB95' 'MAR95'
LIMIT product TO 'FOOTWEAR'
LIMIT district TO 'BOSTON'
REPORT sales

The report output looks like this.

DISTRICT: BOSTON
               -------------SALES--------------
               -------------MONTH--------------
PRODUCT          JAN95      FEB95      MAR95
-------------- ---------- ---------- ----------
FOOTWEAR        91,406.82  86,827.32 100,199.46

As an example of limiting dimension values using a dimension substitute, suppose you have a NUMBER dimension named storeid that has store identification numbers as values. The values of storeid are 10, 20, 30, 100, 110, 120, and 200. You have an INTEGER dimension surrogate for storeid, named storenum, that has an integer value for each position of the values of storeid. The values of storenum are the integers 1 through 7. You can limit the current status list of both storeid and storenum to the same set of values with any of the following commands.

LIMIT storeid TO 10, 100
LIMIT storenum TO 1, 4
LIMIT storenum TO storeid 10, 100
LIMIT storenum TO storenum 1, 4