Basic Drilling Actions

This section describes the most common drilling functions corresponding to those dimensions being analyzed through the "Children" operation. Further on, other forms of navigation, using other operations to select elements to analyze in one dimension, are described. Those operations include selecting a list of elements, querying a single element, and so on.

As mentioned above, one of the advantages O3 Browser has is that it lets you focus your attention on different levels of detail, allowing for investigation of both global levels and more detailed ones. This means that you may break up information in an intuitive and fluent way, making the best use of available data. For instance, if you have one dimension established for dates you can analyze the performance of a business during the whole year, or just for the first quarter, or even for a given month. This function is activated through the "Drill Down" operation.

If this operation is successively applied to the different dimensions, you can see company performance in increasingly more detailed levels. The degree of detail you can get to depends on the definitions made at the time of building the corresponding model.

This capability of analyzing data at different depths applies to all dimensions and provides a chance to spot relevant data or trends and even discover their causes.
O3 Browser offers different analysis operations:

• "Drill Up": Goes up one step in the level of detail of the information being analyzed.
• "Drill Down": Goes down one step in the level of detail of the information being analyzed.
• "Drill Top": Goes directly to the highest level of the hierarchy (Also called Top Query), skipping the intermediate levels.

The most common operations such as are "Drill up, Drill down and Drill Top" can be performed from different controls:

• The Dimensions Bar
• The Dimensions Explorer
• The Analysis Pane.

Selecting a level of hierarchy in one dimension not associated to the X-axis or Series, results in a restriction of the user's query to the selected element or in the application of a filter for that dimension.

Basic Drilling from the Dimensions Bar

It is possible to drill the cube data performing different actions from the Dimensions Bar, being able for a given dimension, to drill through its levels of hierarchy:

• To lower level ("Drill Down")
• To higher levels ("Drill Up")
• To the highest level in the hierarchy ("Drill Top")
• Within elements at the same level.

To drill from the Dimensions Bar, you must follow these steps:

1. Open the list associated to the dimension you wish to explore from the Dimensions Bar.
2. Choose the level of the hierarchy you wish to analyze.
3. If the level has more than one element, two scroll arrows are displayed to the right of the dimension's name. They allow you to go over all the elements in the level upwards or downwards
4. In order to see the highest level in the hierarchy you should choose the corresponding root from the dimensions list.

Drilling from the Dimensions Explorer

The dimensions explorer allows users to view the structure of the analyzed model showing the different dimensions and measures of the cube as a tree.
The tree is displayed on the left of the O3 Browser screen when it is activated. In order to display the Dimensions Explorer you must choose the option "Show Explorer" in the "View" menu, or the corresponding icon on the Toolbar.
The graphic display of the different levels in each dimension allows the users to know the data structure being analyzed. Thus, they are able to determine at all times if it is possible to obtain more detailed information or if on the contrary the level of the explored dimension contains atomic information for the cube.
It is possible to perform the drilling operations from the Dimensions Explorer.

• To lower levels ("Drill Down")
• To higher levels ("Drill Up")
• To the Highest level in the hierarchy. ("Drill Top")
• Within elements at the same level

In order to drill from the Explorer you must follow these steps:

1. Open the Explorer from the Toolbar or from the "View" menu.
2. Select the tree branch corresponding to the dimension we want to choose. In case the level you wish to have access to is not visible, the corresponding branch must be expanded.
3. Drill down the desired dimension according to the following possibilities:
   1. To drill down the elements of a given level choose "Drill down" from the context menu that appears by right clicking. The element you wish to drill down must be selected.
   2. To select the highest level in one dimension, choose "Drill Top" from the same menu.

In order to facilitate the user's identification of the elements on display in the Analysis Pane, O3 Browser shows the elements involved in the view in red.

Drilling from the Analysis Pane

O3 Browser allows users to drill information directly from the graphs and tables displayed in the analysis pane which turns out to be very intuitive for those users who are still not very acquainted with the tool.
Both in graphs and tables, you may drill from the elements themselves or dimension values placed on the different analysis axes. For instance, to "Drill Down", you only need to select the element you wish to drill down, and just double click on it.
This action can be performed either on the X-axis, the Series, or on the rows and columns in a table, obtaining the following results:

• The selected element is changed by those elements in the level immediately below the selected element.
• The element remains as the only displayed element for that dimension. This occurs when the element belongs to the last hierarchical level in the dimension

If a graph or table value is double-clicked, the result is a combined operation corresponding to the simultaneous "down-drilling" of the lower levels in the two dimensions involved.
To perform the opposite operation to the one described above, that is, the one that takes you up on level in the hierarchy of the analyzed dimensions, you must double-click on any free area in the Analysis Pane.

Drilling from the right-click emerging menu

O3 Browser facilitates access to some functions through the menu displayed when right-clicking.
The functions available depend on the mouse location at the time of right clicking. This menu can be displayed from:

• Headers of dimensions on the X-axis or Series.
• Elements of dimensions on the X-axis or Series
• Headers of dimensions arranged as rows or columns.
• Elements of dimensions arranged as rows or columns.

The following picture shows how to analyze a complete flattened level of the dimension on the Series from the right-click emerging menu.

The options in the menu depend on the place where it is opened. In the case of a table you may get the options "Display Totals in a Row", and "Display Totals in a Column", whereas if the menu is opened from the header of the dimension in the series, you get the option "Display Totals in Series"
Below you will find the set of options available when the menu is opened from the Analysis Pane while in the table mode. Options for graphs are similar.