Join Specifications

Setting a join specification allows you to place conditions on the data selected for display in a report. You can apply an inner or outer join, which are described in more detail below. In short, an inner join includes only the data common to all the elements in the join, whether that data is tables or metrics. An outer join includes all of the data in all of the elements. You can set joins at the metric and report levels:

• Join at the metric level: how the metric is joined to other metrics
• Join at the report level: how metrics are joined together in the report; overrides any metric join settings for that report only

Setting the metric join type at the report level (using the Report Data Options menu option in the Report Editor) affects only the results for the report being modified. For steps, see the Analyzing Data chapter of the Basic Reporting Help.

Setting the metric join type at the metric level affects the results for all reports using that metric. To set the metric join type at the metric level, use the Metric Join Type option on the Tools menu of the Metric Editor.

By default, a report uses the metric's join type setting. The default metric join type at the metric level uses the default inherited value, which is an inner join.

For compound metrics, you can also set the join type at the formula level. This controls how the expressions or metrics within the compound metric are joined. For more information about join types at the formula level, see Formula Join Type for Compound Metrics. For more information about compound metrics in general, see Compound Metrics.