vrijdag, april 14, 2006

Ubuntu upgrade to Breezy

Today, I upgraded my Ubuntu system to Breezy -- as I said before, I'm not a Linux knowitall, so I heavily depend on Google and thelike -- again today. I had no clue where to start, to upgrade Hoary to Breezy -- but I really wanted to -- I saw the installation of Breezy in a Virtual Machine, and it looked even more sophisticated and complete than the previous version.
Luckily, I found an easy to follow guide to upgrading my Ubuntu Linux machine :

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-83123.html

I must say -- I didn't follow every step in that article -- the fellow who explains it seems rather squeemish (is that how you write it ?) anyway -- I did do the part where he mounts an iso file -- then I used Synaptic Package manager to upgrade my system -- and in fact -- you do have to remove all packages that have to do with Open Office to get the new version to install. After a first install, I switched on the original repositories and performed another upgrade - and the installation of Open Office 2 of course. I must say -- it looks very 'complete' -- all my powerpoints work perfectly in it -- but it does not translate Word documents very well. Anyway -- back to playing with my Linux machine.

dinsdag, april 11, 2006

Expand/Collapse (Business Objects)

This is the place where I store the things I tried once, found interesting and choose to forget again… to avoid loosing the info altogether, I write it down. Here is a perfect example of such a fact.

At a certain point, I was wondering what “expand” and “collapse” in the analysis menu were used for. I figured it out — but at the time I didn’t have this Blog yet — so I forgot all about it pretty soon after.

Table with year and average RevenueLet’s assume you have a table with Year and Average Revenue (which is a variable, calculated from “Sales Revenue” and “Quantity Sold”). Next, you enter drill-modeMagnifying glass. You can now drill on the year and look at the quarter, to month etc… but what about the individual figures which were used to calculate the average revenue… well — there you go. Still in Drill Mode, you go to the Analysis menu and click “expand”.

Expanded table
Automatically, both measures are shown in colums next to the average Revenue. When you choose collapse, they disappear again.

Nifty little trick.

Couldn’t find this in the Core Reporting, the Intermediate or the Advanced Reporting courseware. But it is in the product-documentation — unlike some other stuff.