Hi -

Our report writers are working with DEFINEs in InfoAssist reports, and have having a difficult time seeing what order the DEFINEs were created, so they can refer to each other - however, there seems to be no single listing of DEFINEs - regardless of the view, they're always grouped by something or another. Further, when a DEFINE is opened & then closed, it moves to the bottom of the list, even though its ordering isn't actually changed (when the report is closed & re-opened, the ordering returns to as it was before).

Finally, even knowing the order of the DEFINEs, there seems to be no mechanism for re-ordering them, other than opening up the report in the Text Editor, which we'd like to avoid for our report writers - is there any other way that we've possibly missed?

Thank you,

Tyler Schwartz

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Kathryn Henning>,

Oh Tyler !! You have touched a nerve with that one. All the old farts on here will tell you that the only way to really get what you want out of WF is write the code by hand.

Personally I would never use the GUI for creating anything but the most simple of reports. Most of mine have HOLDs, JOINs and MATCH FILEs with newly defined fields all over the place in the FEXes. It would drive me nuts to see them all in one place. How can anyone follow the logic like that?

Hello, Tyler. When using the Logical View to display the metadata tree in InfoAssist, DEFINEs created in the procedure are listed in the order in which they were created, at the bottom of the Measures folder if numeric or at the bottom of the Dimensions folder if non-numeric. When using the Structured View, the DEFINEs are listed in the order in which they were created, at the bottom of the SEGMENT from which the last field used in the DEFINE was selected. We will look into why reopening a DEFINE and clicking OK affects the display order of the DEFINE in the metadata tree.

In regards to your comment on the lock of a mechanism to re-order the DEFINEs, do you mean on the metadata tree? And why would you feel the need to re-order them?

Hi Maria -

For a DEFINE to reference another DEFINE (e.g. calculations), it must be declared after any DEFINE it references. If I add a DEFINE, I can't refer to that new DEFINE from any existing DEFINES - ideally I'd be able to create the new DEFINE at the beginning and/or be able to re-order (as it stands now, it requires editing the report in the text editor).

Thanks,

-Tyler

Hello, Tyler. Thanks a lot for the clarifications, and I apologize for my delayed reply. I see your point. Would you please open a NFR for this? Thanks in advance.