The data is of zero or negative value and cannot be displayed

Dennis Hancy

We have yet another customization request from one of our users.

We are being asked if we can change the wording on the message "The data is of zero or negative value and cannot be displayed."

This is the message that OBIEE displays when there are data points on a pie chart that are either zero or negative.

My guess is that this wording in built-in to the OBIEE software and cannot be altered by developers.

If I am wrong, can you let me know how and where we can do this?  If I am right, I will let our users know they are out of luck

Thanks!

Dennis

Jerry Casey

Hi Dennis,

That message is "baked-in".  Can you show them a bar chart, or something that can display negatives?

If it's bad data, it's best, in my experience, to daylight the business process/data issue. If they have to have a pie chart, you can again use an ifnull statement to eliminate the negatives.

Jerry

Dennis Hancy

Thanks Jerry,

This is actually our second go-around with these pie charts.  The first time, they noted that negative numbers were not being represented on the chart.  We explained that pie charts don't do negative numbers, so they decided we could report on the ABS instead.  Now they are asking us to change that baked-in message so it would only refer to zero amounts (since we've "handled" the negative amounts already).

I appreciate your confirmation that we are not able to change the text of that message, as I was not successful in finding any official documentation online stating that.  I will let the user know.  Thanks again!

Dennis

Gianni Ceresa

You can display a message if your pie chart has negative figures.

Of course a negative value there isn't supposed to exist ad this means you have data quality issues, but using conditions on sections you can display a custom message instead of the default one.

The default one can probably be customized as it's supposed into one of the various messages files, but that would be a system change, not by analysis. With a section and a condition it would be a case by case thing.

Jerry Casey

Thanks, Gianni.

I hadn't thought about conditional dashboard sections.

Jerry