Suppressing Zero Values – SAP BO

In the properties for a query, you can specify whether rows or columns that contain zeros as values are to be displayed.
SAP BO Analysis, edition for OLAP is able to leverage the BEX queries from SAP NETWEAVER BW and is fully supporting the zero suppression as configured in the BEx query.
In the BEx query designer you can configure the zero suppression as part of the overall query properties (see Figure 5.81).

Figure 5.81 Zero Suppression

Here you can decide if you would like to suppress zero values in the Rows, Columns, or in Rows and Columns combined and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP will leverage the configuration.
In addition, you can also activate such behavior in SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP as part of your workspace without having to change the underlying BEX QUERY.
It is recommended to leverage the settings in the BEx query already because it guarantees that the smallest data volume possible is being transferred to the BI client.

In our example, we have a workspace which shows the key figures from our BEx queries along with the different members of characteristic Country (see Figure 5.82).

Figure 5.82 Analysis Workspace

On the tab Display of our workspace, we can now use the menu Nulls & Zeros to configure where we would like to suppress null or zero values (see Figure 5.83).

Figure 5.83 Menu Nulls & Zeros

Null values are basically entries in your data source that have not been initialized and do not contain any real data. For example, you might have three address fields as attributes for your customer, but only some of them contain actual data.
Zero values are those entries in your data source that contain zero as data.

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In our example, we have three columns that contain null values: Product Costs, Transport Costs, and Rebates (see Figure 5.84).

Figure 5.84 Hide in Rows

If you would active the menu option Null & Zeros > Hide in row then nothing will change (see Figure 5.84) because the complete rows are not empty. In cases where only some of the cells of a row are empty, like in our example where three key figures contain null values, but two key figures contain actual data, the row will not be suppressed.

Figure 5.85 Hide in column

If you would active the menu option Null & Zeros > Hide in column then the three key figures Product Costs, Transport Cost, and Rebates will be suppressed as those columns contain only null values (see Figure 5.85).

The option Hide all allows you to hide all rows and columns which contain null or zero values together.
In addition to filtering zero and null values, you also have the option to configure how null values will be displayed in the cross tab. The option is available in the properties of the cross tab (see Figure 5.86).
In the Properties of the cross tab, you can use the option Display Null Cells as and configure how null values should be displayed in the cross tab.

Figure 5.86 Cross tab properties

For our example, we changed the property Display Null Cells as and entered “00” as the value and removed the filtering of the null and zero values. As a result, our cross tab now shows the three key figures with null values, but the null values are being replaced with “00” (see Figure 5.87).

Figure 5.87 Null Values replaced

In this section, we reviewed the different options to suppress zero and null values as part of the data request. In the next section, we will take a closer look at the option to use Analysis Views to share the information with the other BI clients.