OSBI/saiku-ui — Issue #110: Sailu concept of columns and rows is confusing
Author: buggtb
Created: 2011-10-11 15:04:45+00:00
State: open

One of the first things that strikes me as a Saiku user is that it's hard to know where to drop fields.
"Hard to know" is an exaggeration of course, it's more like "akward" or "confusing".

You see, the concepts of columns and rows only makes sense from the instance you've dropped at least 2 columns but usually 3.
In case I drop for example "product family" and "Sales count" from the Sales cube into the Rows section you don't get any results.

So I wanted to get a bunch of rows with family&count but in Saiku terminology it probably means that I should have picked the Columns section at the top.
So I move both fields to the "columns section" but nothing happens either.

After a bit of trial and error you usually get to the point where you find a solution that works so there is nothing dramatic about this issue.

However, it would be great if Saiku could implement the following:
- Whenever you drop a field anywhere should see results, even if it's a simple list or the aggregation of a metric
- Whenever a field is moved or removed from a Saiku report it should change the result or clear the result if no results are present
- When there are no fields dropped yet, the field target areas should simply read "Fields" and "Filters"
- When a second or third column is dropped you should display "Rows", "Columns", "Filters" only if appropriate and possible
- In case you have rows and columns it would be great if you could actually layout the areas in the form of a cross-tab with metrics in the center.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

--matt casters