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I am building a web front end for accessing Business Objects reports using the Business Objects SDK for .NET. I have been able to hack my way through 95% of the business requirements with the sparse documentation and forum posts available online for the topic. My final roadblock centers on working with parameterized reports. Our business has situations in which a report has two parameters and the end user is only requried to populate one of them. It's easy enough to collect and cleanse this data, but no matter how I try to pass the null valued parameter to the reports, I get no data back. If both parameters are populated I DO get the expected data. When stepping through the code in Visual Studio I see that whenever BusinessObjects returns a null valued parameter it displays as an empty string (""). I have tried passing this as a parameter value and have also tried assigning the parameter a value of null. Neither of these options returns results once the report is scheduled and run. I have an example of my parameter assignment code below using each of the approaches that I've taken (We need to check for a string valued "null" as the user's have requested the ability to type "null" and have that passed to the report). None of these produce a report that contains data.

sVal.Value = param.ParameterValue != "null" ? param.ParameterValue : String.Empty; 
sVal.Value = param.ParameterValue != "null" ? param.ParameterValue : "";
sVal.Value = param.ParameterValue != "null" ? param.ParameterValue : null;

Is there a specific value that the Enterprise Server uses to indicate null, such as dates are required to be wrapped in Date()?

Edit: The functionality I need to duplicate as seen in InfoView: Image of null parameter option in InfoView

Tuck
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1 Answers1

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In Web Intelligence, by default all prompts are required and you must provide a value for it via the SDK. As of BusinessObjects XI R3 it is possible to actually configure the prompt in the report to be optional. This configuration is done by the report writer. When the prompt is optional then you can opt to not set the prompt value when working with the SDK.

An alternate way to have an optional prompt is to make the prompt "matches pattern" or if it is a date, figure out a default value. When the prompt is meant to be optional and is "in list" then you can set the value to be "%" which, while for a date, set the default value.

shrub34
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  • Thanks shrub34 - Perhaps I should clarify - in my particular use case it doesn't matter if the parameter is optional or not. My specific problem is that when passing a parameter I am unable to give it a value of null and have the report return results. i.e. If the report has two parameters "foo" and "bar" I need to be able to pass in foo="value" and bar="null". In InfoView users have option of setting either value to null and having all the results for the non-null value returned. If I set either param to null via sdk the report returns empty, regardless of my various "null" styles above. – Tuck Nov 28 '11 at 17:26
  • I've added a screenshot from InfoView that demostrates the functionality I need to duplicate. – Tuck Nov 28 '11 at 17:44
  • Well, I agree that my answer provides no help then. I have never seen the "Set to Null" option. I made a bad assumption of what you were trying to implement. Is the report a Web Intelligence or Crystal report? If it is Crystal adding that tag may help find the answer. – shrub34 Nov 28 '11 at 21:36
  • The report is a Crystal Report - I'll try adding that tag. Thanks! – Tuck Nov 29 '11 at 04:28