Selecting Members by Using Wildcards

You can use wildcards to select members, generation, or level names in a report script. If you use member names, Essbase searches the member and all descendants of that member. If you specify a generation or level name, Essbase searches only members of that generation or level.

Using wildcards reduces the member information needed for a script and simplifies script maintenance.

The following two types of wildcards are supported in Report Writer:

  To select members using a trailing wildcard, at the point in the script where you want to select members using a trailing wildcard, use the format:

<MATCH (memberName,"character*")

where memberName is the name of the member that you select, and character is the beginning character in the following member. The following report script:

<MATCH (Year,"J*")

returns Jan, Jun, and Jul.

  To select members using a pattern-matching wildcard, at the point in the script where you want to select members using a pattern-matching wildcard, use the format:

<MATCH (memberName,"???characters")

where memberName is the name of the member to select, and characters are the characters in the following member. The following report script:

<MATCH (Product,"???-10")

returns 100-10, 200-10, 300-10, and 400-10.

Note:

In the Sample.Basic database example, three question marks represent the variable three characters in the string. If two question marks were used in the example, no matches were found. You can place question mark wildcards anywhere in the match string.