Another IIF statement question

I have a matrix table set up that returns some invoice amounts for each
customer, by month. The months are going across the top; the customers going
down the side; amounts as the 'data' portion.
Anyway, in my actual database table, some customers didn't have invoice
amounts for certain months (ie. they didn't buy products for that
month).When I run a query by month, only the months that they have invoices
for will show up.
Ex.
Cust Mnt InvAmt
1 1 $5
1 2 $5
1 9 $5
2 12 $0
Now, when I run my matrix table, all works great except that there are nulls
in the spots under the months no invoices exist (for instance, months 1 -11
for cust#2 in my example would show nulls, but month 12 would show $0).
I set up an IIF statement in my stored procedure (which is the dataset for
my matrix table) that will replace nulls with 0s, but since there are no
rows for the months with no invoices, the nulls don't exist and, therefore,
0s aren't inserted.
I've also tried making an IIF statement right inside the Expression part of
the matrix cell but I keep getting compilation errors.
Any ideas? TIA!I usually resolve this sort of problem in one of two ways, either use an
OUTER JOIN or UNION in the underlying query to make sure you get at least
one row for every month. Combined with the ISNULL function to make sure
there are zero values in the appropriate columns. This gives the matrix what
it needs to produce the sort of result I think you are looking for.
Sometimes it means you have to have a contrived table to enable this, I
usually have something like a Period table which acts as a time dimension for
just this sort of thing.
Hope this helps
Mike
"Kelly" wrote:
> I have a matrix table set up that returns some invoice amounts for each
> customer, by month. The months are going across the top; the customers going
> down the side; amounts as the 'data' portion.
> Anyway, in my actual database table, some customers didn't have invoice
> amounts for certain months (ie. they didn't buy products for that
> month).When I run a query by month, only the months that they have invoices
> for will show up.
> Ex.
> Cust Mnt InvAmt
> 1 1 $5
> 1 2 $5
> 1 9 $5
> 2 12 $0
> Now, when I run my matrix table, all works great except that there are nulls
> in the spots under the months no invoices exist (for instance, months 1 -11
> for cust#2 in my example would show nulls, but month 12 would show $0).
> I set up an IIF statement in my stored procedure (which is the dataset for
> my matrix table) that will replace nulls with 0s, but since there are no
> rows for the months with no invoices, the nulls don't exist and, therefore,
> 0s aren't inserted.
> I've also tried making an IIF statement right inside the Expression part of
> the matrix cell but I keep getting compilation errors.
> Any ideas? TIA!
>
>