Context operators in Business Objects (part 2)

Foreach and Forall allow you to add or remove dimensions to or from a calculation.

When you look at the table to the left, you will see that the third column shows the same as the column next to it. The third column contains Min(<Sales revenue>), still it returns the same, which is logical. The context of the calculation is just “Year”. This means that The minimum Sales Revenue based on one number returns only that number.

With the ForEach operator, we can now add a dimension to the context. The formula is now : Min(<Sales revenue> foreach <Quarter>). The minimum is now calculated per Quarter as well. Returning the following table :

This means, that (for the calculation) the quarter has been included in the calculation.

Forall is the exact opposite. If you have a table containing Year, Quarter,Month, Sales Revenue, then min(<Sales Revenue> forall <Month>) will remove Quarter from the equation and return the minimum by year and Quarter only.

Next issue :

In Body and In Report, which are interesting when you use percentages.