Cascading prompts is a feature that is liked by many customers because it allows them to have a preview of their data through prompts before actually seeing the data. Within Business Objects, the prompt behavior is delegated to the system where the prompts are defined.

If the prompts are in BW or HANA , the prompt behavior is handled by their respective systems and this usually meant that cascading prompts were available only if we modeled HANA Universes and set the prompts on the Universe. Having a direct connection to HANA in BOBJ 4.2 I was curious to see how we could achieve Cascading prompts in HANA directly as opposed to using a universe to create cascading prompts with filters applied on LOVs.

To achieve this, we make use of Parent Child Hierarchy in HANA.

Create a calculation view (CV) ‘CV_PRODHIER’ that defines the “Product_Category” Hierarchy.

Assuming that Fact table or CV is available, we create final CV of Data Category type ‘CUBE’ with ‘Star Join’ checked in& include the Fact table/CV in Star Join along with ‘CV_PRODHIER’.

Make Referential join with ‘Product’ & ‘Child’ fields as Child field contains all the possible values in the Hierarchy (Both Parent & Child level values).

Create an Input Parameter that makes use of the Hierarchy we created as a Value Help

Apply Filter to the Fact node on the fields involved in the Hierarchy.

Final Output:

When the final CV is executed we see a single IP being displayed which holds the values for Product Category, SubCategory & the Product Names. Thus making use of Hierarchy for Cascading selection in HANA prompts. Also since this is going to be linked with the transaction data , it becomes truly cascading at the modeling layer itself.

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