Working with Functions.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

In this article I would like to show you how much more you can do with the regular functions of Business Objects.

SUM

First of all I would like to start with function SUM

If you ever want to get the global sum of a table and work on table value sum like getting a relative average of a summed value over global sum.

Let's assume you have a cross table

....    CATEGORY1 CATEGORY2 SUM  Average
Male       10        20      30   42.85%
Female     15        25      40   57.15%
SUM        25        45      70
Average    35.71%    64.28%

So in order to get the averages you need to divide the sum to global sum:

So your average formula will be:

=Sum([Sales]) / (Sum([Sales]) In Report)

Yes In Report provide global sum

RunningSum

If you ever work on cumulative sum of values, you need to be careful about how your cumulative results go

=RunningSum([Sales];Col;([Company]))

Here second option provide you to go with Col or Row in terms of your cumulative direction.

The third option is your break point. Like your cumulative results will be reset on each company so you will have cumulative sum in each respective Company, otherwise it will keep summing the result in global scale.

Get the table and see the results by playing around with the formula.