Introduction

Using formulas and functions in a report helps us extend the report functionality and address simple and complex report requirements.

While a query is based on a universe, a BEx query, or a datafile, it's still restricted to the data source structure. Formulas and functions enable us to add calculations and perform additional analysis as well as address data issues that the database may not support or that are too "report specific".

Another good reason why functions and formulas are important is that they can result in better performance as they are performed only on the report's data, which always holds a smaller dataset rather than query-retrieved data from much larger structures.

The business user can have various types of functionality requirements, from creating a simple, aggregative function that will calculate a rolling 12-month average to more complex functions that calculate the time difference between two dates in hours and seconds.

Web Intelligence contains function libraries...