Hi all,

I am developing a report that has many drill downs into a detail report.

When testing this report I find that if I click on a drill down that I have already clicked on once before, the browser just gives me the results from the previous click.

For example I received an error message when clicking on a drill down link for the first time. I then corrected the report that I am drilling down to. Then when I go back to drill down on my data again, instead of running the corrected fex it just instantly gives me the error message again.

It seems that the only way to test the new code, is to re-run the calling report and click on a drill down that I have not yet clicked on. If I click on one I have used before it just pulls the last results from memory.

I have tried clearing my cache (Ctrl-F5) but this doesn't work. Any ideas?

Thanks

We use a random number in the drill-down parameters to avoid this. The way IE (and I'm assuming many other browsers) work is that if it sees a url string that it's already been to (that hasn't expired) then it will just pull that from cache. You could go and fiddle with your browser settings, but that only helps you, not all your customers.

So, to avoid this, make the URL to the drill-down different every time you run the "parent" report. As I said, we use a random number.

Somewhere in your "parent" report, have the following set command to generate the random number.

-SET &RANDOM = RDUNIF(D5) * RDUNIF(D5) * 10000;

and then in the drill-down, add the random value as a parameter -- note that the drill-down report doesn't have to have that as an actual amper variable -- you're simply making the url different.

FOCEXEC=app/reportfi(x=&x ...more parms... RANDOM='&RANDOM'),

Thanks Trav, thats worked a treat!

Smart solution Trav....
I always hit F5 (refresh) but if the drill down opens a PDF or Excel file that F5 does not work.

I have to build this in a lot of applications...

Please explain to me how this supposed to work because I haven't grasp the idea of Trav's solution.

If every time a new value is given to &RANDOM in the drill-down fex will have a new webpage, the same should apply to my current drill-down fex(I have not yet apply this techque):
Say the parameters consists of one column value and one &variable from HTM prompt. During design time, I plugged in some dummy values to the parameters and ran the fex as I coded it. At the end, those dummy values are removed. Everything (seemed?) working properly, until I selected the column value same as the dummy value I set before, with &variable has different value, the old page was displayed!

What about TARGET = '_blank' when defining the drill-down, will it give you a new window every time? What makes it different that &RAMDON and my &variable?

Thanks

Hua

Hi Hua,

You are correct that there will be no caching if you are passing a unique combinations of variables. The problem is that it is possible to drill UP, which is where you go to a report that you have previously seen. It is likely that IE will try to help you by displaying whatever is in the browser cache, which does not always work. By including a random number, it will always re-generate the report from scratch, which will often solve random display issues (especially if you are building images / graphs and storing them at the file system level).

Moogle,

Thank you for your explainations. I'll keep this solution in mind when coding drilldowns.

Have a nice day!

Hua