About view filters

Before you begin

You must have MicroStrategy OLAP Services to create view filters. If you would like to evaluate OLAP Services, contact your MicroStrategy Account Executive or e-mail MicroStrategy directly at info@microstrategy.com.

A view filter restricts the amount of data displayed on the report, providing you with a different view of the data. This new view can provide a new business perspective for analysis, without having to re-execute the report SQL against the data warehouse.

For example, you have a report with Region, Category, and Profit displayed, as shown below in the report on the left. The report on the right includes the following view filter qualifications defined:

Region In list {Northwest, Southwest}: This qualification restricts the report results to display data only for the Northwest and Southwest regions.
Profit Greater than 15000: This qualification restricts the report results to display data only for categories in the Northwest or Southwest regions that had greater than $15,000 in profits.

The following table lists scenarios where you can use view filters to best support your business model and enhance the analysis of your reports.

Analysis Capability	Example
Modify the data displayed without re-executing SQL against the data warehouse.	Adding, deleting, or modifying view filters are all executed against a report in memory.
Allow multiple users to create separate views of data on a single report in memory.	Multiple users can define individual view filters to further restrict the data of a report connected to a shared Intelligent Cube.
Filter on attributes included in the report.	With the attribute Year on a report, you can use a view filter to determine which years of data to display on the report.
Perform attribute-to-attribute comparisons.	With the attributes Customer City and Store City on a report, you can specify that Customer City be the same as the Store City. This can give a view of how a store is performing with local customers.
Filter on metrics included in the report. The output level for the filter can be applied at the report level or the level of the attributes displayed on the report.	With the metric Profit on a report, you can filter on Profit greater than or equal to $1,000,000.
Perform metric-to-metric comparisons.	With Revenue and Operating Cost metrics on a report, you can specify that Revenue be greater than or equal to Operating Cost.
Filter on attributes or metrics that are not displayed on the report.	You can drag-and-drop the Profit metric from the report grid to the Report Objects pane. This removes the Profit metric from the display, but any view filters based on that object are still calculated.

Information on using view filters is provided in the topics listed below: