Drilling on a report creates a new report that is executed as an entirely separate job. This target report inherits VLDB properties, including attribute outer join settings, from the parent report. If the parent report is configured, under Report Data Options > Attribute Join Type, to preserve all lookup table elements joined to the final result table, then the target report will also preserve lookup table elements. Any attributes that are added to the target report, as a drill target, will use the default attribute join type (normally "Outer").
For example, a report based on the Country attribute defines a drilling path across to the Month attribute in the report drill map. The report is set to preserve lookup table elements:
Accordingly, the report displays all countries, even where no sales data exist.
Drilling across to Month also includes months without sales data. (Only partial results are shown here.)
If, instead, a drill operation to Month should always treat Month with an inner join, there is an option in Report Data Options to specify the join type of drilling target attributes. Go to the Drilling tab of Report Data Options and click on the Drill Attributes Join Type button. In the resulting dialog box, attributes may be chosen and their join types specified.
After changing the drilling join type option as shown above, drilling across to Month now yields only those months with sales data.
Note: Join types specified in this location apply only to attributes used as drilling targets. When drilling to a template, the template is the drilling target, not an attribute, and the drill attributes join type settings are not used. Consult the following Strategy Knowledgebase document for more details on the interaction between the parent report and the target template with regard to VLDB Properties and Report Data Options:
TN11076 (TN5200-75x-0456): When drilling from a report to a template, the child report inherits the VLDB setting values of the parent report and ignores those set for the template in Strategy 8.0.x - 8.1.x.
