Focal Point
[Resolved] Broken drill-down causing display issues

This topic can be found at:
https://forums.informationbuilders.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1461084022/m/722105183

February 26, 2010, 03:21 PM
Moogle
[Resolved] Broken drill-down causing display issues
Hi Team,

I have an issue where a drill-down link displays HTML code instead of a drillable Measure value. I believe it is going over the character limit for URLs, and then fails to render properly. This is the code that gets shown on the reports:

  
<A HREF="javascript:MDitemClick(15,'DRILL_NAME=DATA&DRILL_COL=DATA&DRILL_VAL3=2009Q1&SCORECARD_ID=%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%25201&TIME_RANGE=5PR&DEFAULT_TIME_LEVEL_USED=2&TIME_OR_TIME_RANGE=TIME&TIME=%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E&SORTACROSS=TIME_LEVEL02_VALUE&RPT_FLDIN01=INDVRC_ACTUAL_TARGET_DEFAULT&LOCAL_TGT=TARGET&USE_MEAS_DIM_DFLT=Y&MEASURE_SERIES=85&D00_DIMENSION_TYPE_Edit=T&D01_LEVEL01_VALUE_Edit=2009&D02_LEVEL02_VALUE_Edit=4&D03_LEVEL03_VALUE_Edit=%2520&D04_LEVEL04_VALUE_Edit=%2520&D05_LEVEL05_VALUE_Edit=%2520&D06_LEVEL06_VALUE_Edit=%2520&USE_DIM_TREE=Y','',16,'DRILL_NAME=DATA&DRILL_COL=DATA&DRILL_VAL3=2009Q1&SCORECARD_ID=%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%25201&TIME_RANGE=5PR&DEFAULT_TIME_LEVEL_USED=2&TIME_OR_TIME_RANGE=TIME&TIME=%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255


As you can see, the problem is all those %255E characters that get added.

This occurs on multi-measure reports and on the Measure Detail report, but not at all times. I will encounter it if I drill on certain dimension values or if I use the Dimension tree to pick certain values. Nothing exotic; for instance I picked 2009 Q4 to generate the above code.

Please advise.

Cheers,

Joey

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Moogle,


-WebFOCUS 8.2.01 on Windows
February 26, 2010, 03:40 PM
Bob Jude Ferrante
We haven't seen the HTML overflow happen, but I'm assuming it's happening because the URL is ending up longer than IE's limit of 4K - you probably have very deep dimensions in this case?

In 5.2.1 we replaced the multi-space delimiters to 30 chars in dimension references with a single delimiter character. This compacts the URLs and would prevent this from being an issue (you won't have all the %255E chars). So possibly an upgrade is in order if this issue is a hot one. It's very hard to patch... a lot of files in PMF had to be rewritten to change this. Blame IE for the silly limit - Firefox doesn't have it (but Firefox has its own agita, right?).

thanks


Bob Jude Ferrante
Director of Business and Development
WebFOCUS Performance Management
Bob_Ferrante@ibi.com
917-339-5105

I'll take any questions about PMF - business or technical - anytime!

February 26, 2010, 04:38 PM
Moogle
I understand what you are talking about, because I had a client three implementations ago that had a deep dimension that caused the drill-downs to break after drilling many levels down.

This is a different case, though, since my dimensions are very shallow (two levels max). I also tried it in Firefox, and this is where it gets strange. Instead of seeing the same error, Firefox puts nothing on that row for the number portion. The issue still exists, it is just hiding the random characters.

Do you think I should open a case and run some traces for you? Definitely going to be a serious issue, but I've got a little breathing room as we haven't deployed anything yet.

Cheers,

Joey


-WebFOCUS 8.2.01 on Windows
February 26, 2010, 05:49 PM
Moogle
Hi again,

Here's a little follow-up information.

I managed to cause the error on the Rolling 5 Period report without drilling on anything, by setting the default period to Quarter. The report renders one quarter column and then part of the second quarter column before it shows the html code.

Since this is a multi-measure report, the drill-down links are exactly the same, except for the Measure_ID value. This means that drill-down length isn't the cause of this, since the drill-downs that work are exactly the same length as the one that fails. I right-clicked on a working link and clicked 'copy shortcut.' Here's the output from that link:

 javascript:MDitemClick(15,'DRILL_NAME=DATA&DRILL_COL=DATA&DRILL_VAL3=2009Q3&SCORECARD_ID=%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%25201&TIME_RANGE=5PR&DEFAULT_TIME_LEVEL_USED=0&TIME_OR_TIME_RANGE=TIME&TIME=%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E&SORTACROSS=TIME_LEVEL02_VALUE&RPT_FLDIN01=INDVRC_ACTUAL_TARGET_DEFAULT&LOCAL_TGT=TARGET&USE_MEAS_DIM_DFLT=Y&MEASURE_SERIES=84','',16,'DRILL_NAME=DATA&DRILL_COL=DATA&DRILL_VAL3=2009Q3&SCORECARD_ID=%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%25201&TIME_RANGE=5PR&DEFAULT_TIME_LEVEL_USED=0&TIME_OR_TIME_RANGE=TIME&TIME=%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E&SORTACROSS=TIME_LEVEL02_VALUE&RPT_FLDIN01=INDVRC_ACTUAL_TARGET_DEFAULT&LOCAL_TGT=TARGET&MEASURE_SERIES=84',''); 

Now Here's the output from the link that breaks:
 <A HREF="javascript:MDitemClick(15,'DRILL_NAME=DATA&DRILL_COL=DATA&DRILL_VAL3=2009Q3&SCORECARD_ID=%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%25201&TIME_RANGE=5PR&DEFAULT_TIME_LEVEL_USED=0&TIME_OR_TIME_RANGE=TIME&TIME=%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E%255E&SORTACROSS=TIME_LEVEL02_VALUE&RPT_FLDIN01=INDVRC_ACTUAL_TARGET_DEFAULT&LOCAL_TGT=TARGET&USE_MEAS_DIM_DFLT=Y&MEASURE_SERIES=85','',16,'DRILL_NAME=DATA&DRILL_COL=DATA&DRILL_VAL3=2009Q3&SCORECARD_ID=%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%2520%25201&TIME_RANGE=5PR&DEFAULT_TIME_LEVEL_U 


So, I think you will agree that this is not exactly the issue related to going over IE's 4K character limit on drills.

Let me know if you can think of anything else?

Cheers,

Joey
March 25, 2010, 12:41 PM
Moogle
This issue has been resolved.

Root Cause: Apache Tomcat code page set to UTF-8 instead of Western European (ISO)