What are drill hierarchies?

A drill hierarchy is a set of related items that provide a predefined path to help Discoverer users navigate worksheets. The figure below shows a typical drill hierarchy based on geographical region (i.e. Region, City, and Store Name).

Figure 10-1 Typical Discoverer drill hierarchy

Description of the illustration drill1.gif

Using the example drill hierarchy above, drilling down into a region enables a worksheet user to analyze data about cities in the selected region.

Drill hierarchies are created by the Discoverer manager. If a worksheet item is included in multiple drill hierarchies, Discoverer assigns the last hierarchy used and saved as the default drill hierarchy. The default hierarchy items are displayed in a -drill menu. Other hierarchy items are displayed under the All Hierarchies menu option.

To select a drill level from other hierarchies available, select the All Hierarchies option on the drill menu. In the example below, the other hierarchies available are Geographical hierarchy and Video Analysis Store Hierarchy.

Figure 10-2 Multiple hierarchies in Discoverer

Description of the illustration ddrill26.gif

When you drill into numeric data, Discoverer behaves as follows:

• When you drill down, Discoverer breaks down the numeric values at the drill level you select. For example, if you drill into an annual sales figure, you might see the annual sales figure broken down into monthly sales figures.

• When you drill up, Discoverer consolidates numeric values at the drill level you select. For example, if you drill up from monthly sales figures, you might see the monthly sales figures consolidated into annual sales figures.

Note: When you drill into a worksheet that contains analytic functions, you might have to adjust the analytic function formula to work correctly with the new worksheet layout (for more information, see "About analytic functions and drilling into and out of data").