Introduction

Creating queries is considered in many ways the core functionality of the Web Intelligence application. The source for every report is a query that is based on a database (relational or operational), a data warehouse, an OLAP cube, a BEx query, a web service, or even an Excel or a text file.

The general idea and main theme when building a query is that we create a structure that can access our data sources and fetch relevant, meaningful, useful data to our report presentation layer, according to the user requirements.

Creating queries is the first step in creating a report and it is important because it defines the context of the data we are analyzing as a well as its accuracy.

A good query would be one that retrieves only the data slice that is relevant to the report consumer.

In terms of efficiency, query running time, and performance, we are more dependent on the way and type the database is structured. However, for the end user (the report builder), what matters is the fact...