We have a user in HR that is trying to write their own report (using the same setup listed in my signature) regarding employees and education levels.

The problem they are having is that if a person has two levels of education on record (High School, Bachelors, Masters, or Doctorate) there are two records returned for that user in the report showing identical information for all fields except Education Level.

The desired result is to have only one record per person returned, and to have that record reflect their highest level of education.


I don't have access to the actual tables used in their report due to their sensitive nature, so I tried working the scenario with manufacturing data. My first inclination was to use a DECODE function to assign a value to each education level, and then subject those values to a MAX function to only return the maximum value for each record.

Unfortunately, this approach applies the MAX function to the entire report, not on a by-record basis, and thus only returns those records that reflect the maximum DECODE value...or in the case of Education level, would only return those employees with their Doctorate degree.


Are the DECODE and MAX functions the best way to go about this? If so, how do I apply them to this report on a record-by-record basis? If they are not the best approach, what is...an IF THEN ELSE statement?

For reference, here is the relevant part of the code I used to apply my DECODE and MAX functions:

 -* File Define_Test.fex
DEFINE FILE IFS_PART_CATALOG ADD
DESCRIPTION_NUMBERS/I5=DECODE IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.DESCRIPTION( 'TRANSDUCER, PRESS' 1 'CIRCUIT BREAKER, SINGLE' 2 'CONNECTOR, RCPT' 3 );
END
TABLE FILE IFS_PART_CATALOG
PRINT
     'IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.STD_NAME_ID'
     'IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.DESCRIPTION_NUMBERS' NOPRINT
     'IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.UNIT_CODE'
     'IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.CELL_STOCK'
BY 'IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.PART_NO'
BY 'IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.DESCRIPTION'
HEADING
""
FOOTING
""
WHERE IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.DESCRIPTION_NUMBERS EQ MAX(0, 3);
WHERE RECORDLIMIT EQ 50
ON TABLE SET PAGE-NUM OFF
ON TABLE NOTOTAL
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT HTML
ON TABLE SET HTMLCSS ON
ON TABLE SET STYLE *
     UNITS=IN,
     SQUEEZE=ON,
     ORIENTATION=PORTRAIT,

My apologies for the long post, and I thank you in advance for any assistance you may provide.


Evan

The DECODE is fine, but I would use

BY HIGHEST 1 level_of_education

This returns all the levels of education from SQL Server, then WebFOCUS takes over to output the highest level.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Francis Mariani,

Bear in mind that in case of ties (i.e., someone who has two Degree records with the same decode score), HIGHEST 1 will yield two rows.

Oops, overlooked that scenario.

And (to state the obvious) make sure that you use

BY employee_id
BY HIGHEST 1 level_of_education

to get the highest level for each employee. Otherwise you get the highest level of education available with all employees that have that level.

Also, as Jack states, you would still get two records for someone that has two BA's, two MA's or (eek!) two PhD's (assuming that a Master's of Accounting is the same decode value as an MBA and the like.)

Thank you all for the prompt replies!

quote:

Originally posted by Francis Mariani:
The DECODE is fine, but I would use

BY HIGHEST 1 level_of_education

This returns all the levels of education from SQL Server, then WebFOCUS takes over to output the highest level.

My apologies, but I am very new to WebFOCUS, as I'm sure you're aware by this post and my ignorance of the BY HIGHEST 1 command. At risk of sounding like I want you to 'hold my hand', could I ask where in the fex file the 'BY HIGHEST 1' code should appear? Your post makes me think it belongs at the top of the file before the DECODE appears...is this correct?

Something like this for my manufacturing example, perhaps?

-* File Define_Test.fex
BY HIGHEST 1 DESCRIPTION_NUMBERS
DEFINE FILE IFS_PART_CATALOG ADD
DESCRIPTION_NUMBERS/I5=DECODE IFS_PART_CATALOG.IFS_PART_CATALOG.DESCRIPTION( 'TRANSDUCER, PRESS' 1 'CIRCUIT BREAKER, SINGLE' 2 'CONNECTOR, RCPT' 3 );
END
TABLE FILE IFS_PART_CATALOG
PRINT
.
.
.


sleepy

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

We're all sleepy on Friday afternoon. The BY HIGHEST is an alternate form of the BY command and belongs with the other BYs in your TABLE part. The normal sort order is low to high. BY HIGHEST sorts high to low.

You might want to check the syntax for BY in the language manual, wfcrlang.pdf.

Wow, I guess it's time for me to sign off for the week, eh? It's a BY statement so you think I'd have at least figured out that it goes with the other BY statements.

I have a copy of the wfcrlang, but didn't even think to check it before asking here for help...sorry! :-\

Thanks Ginny, I'll see what I can find and post back if I can't figure it out AFTER reading and experimenting.


sleepy

I think you are on the right track with assigning a numeric value to the level of education. It shouldn't matter if you use decode or if, then, else. The problem is coming up with one record per employee. Try running through your data two times. In the first pass define the level of education as a numeric value and sort:
BY EMPLOYEE
BY HIGHEST EDUCATION
etc.

In your second pass use:
WHERE EMPLOYEE NE LAST EMPLOYEE