RETURN

Within an OLAP DML program, the RETURN command terminates execution of a program prior to its last line. You can optionally specify a value that the program will return. The value should have the same data type or dimension that you specified when you defined the program.

Syntax

RETURN [expression]

Arguments

expression: The expression to be returned to the calling program when the called program terminates.

Notes

User-Defined Function

To return a value, a program must be called as a function. That is, it must be used as an expression in a statement. The following is an example of a user-defined function being used as an argument to the REPORT command.

REPORT ISRECENT(actual)

When a program is called with a CALL command or by using the standalone command format, its return value is discarded.

Return Value Dimensionality

The value returned by a program is a single value, without any dimensions. However, within the context of the command that calls a user-defined function, the function expression has the dimensions of its arguments. For instance, in "User-Defined Function", when actual is dimensioned by line, division and month, then the expression ISRECENT(actual) is also dimensioned by line, division and month. Therefore, Oracle OLAP will call the ISRECENT program once for every combination of line, division and month in the current status.

Return Value Data Type

When you specify a data type when you define a program, the return value will have that data type. When you specify a dimension when you define a program, the return value will be a single value in that dimension. When the expression in the RETURN command does not match the declared data type or dimension, Oracle OLAP will convert it to the declared data type.

When you do not specify a data type or dimension in the definition of a program, its return value is treated as worksheet data. This means Oracle OLAP will convert any return value to the data type that is required by the calling context. This may lead to unexpected results.

Dimension Location

When the program returns values of a dimension, the dimension must be declared in the same analytic workspace as the program. The program will be in the output of the LISTBY program, and OBJ(ISBY) will be TRUE for the dimension.

No Return Value

When a program has been invoked as a function, but it does not provide a return value, the value that is returned to the calling program is NA.

User-defined Functions

For more information about user-defined functions, see the entries for the ARGUMENT, CALL, and DEFINE PROGRAMM commands.

Examples

Example 21-3 Terminating a Program Early

In this example, suppose you want a report program that will produce a report only when a variable called newfigures is present in the current analytic workspace. In your program, you can use an IF command to check whether newfigures exists and a RETURN to stop execution when it does not.

DEFINE sales.report PROGRAM
PROGRAM
IF NOT EXISTS('newfigures')
   THEN DO
          SHOW 'The new data is not yet available.'
          RETURN
        DOEND
PUSH month
TRAP ON cleanup
LIMIT month TO LAST 3
REPORT ACROSS month: newfigures
 
cleanup:
POP month
END

Now when you run the program without newfigures in the analytic workspace, the program produces a message and the RETURN command terminates execution of the program at that point.

Example 21-4 Returning a Value

The following program derives next year's budget figures from the actual variable. It is a temporary calculation. You could call this program in a REPORT command, thus calculating and reporting the budget figures without storing them in an analytic workspace.

DEFINE budget.growth PROGRAM DECIMAL
PROGRAM
VARIABLE growth DECIMAL
VARIABLE factor DECIMAL
growth = TOTAL(actual(year 'Yr97') year) - TOTAL(actual(year -
   'Yr96') year)
factor = ( 1 + growth ) / TOTAL(actual(year 'Yr96') year)
RETURN TOTAL(actual(year 'Yr97') year) * (factor * factor/2)
END