In Pentaho Analyzer, filters are used to restrict or limit data in a report, so you can build the report to show only the information that you want to view. For example, a typical report shows sales by product line. By applying a date filter on Quarter, you can restrict the data so that only sales for the one quarter are shown. If you add a string filter for Europe, the report would display data for the European sales that quarter. If you add a string filter on another field to exclude a product line, the report would display European sales data in that quarter minus the excluded product.
You can apply a filter by selecting it from a list, or you can choose a specific type of filter to refine the data the way you want: