cognos dictionary

drill down

The act of navigating from one level of data to a more detailed level. The levels are set by the

structure of the data.

drill up

The act of navigating from one level of data to a less detailed level. The levels are set by the

structure of the data.

package

A subset of a model, which can be the whole model, to be made available to the Cognos 8 server.

publish

To expose all or part of a Framework Manager model via a package to the Cognos 8 server, so

that Cognos BI Users can use it to create reports and other content.

query

A specification for a set of data to retrieve from a data source. A report specification can contain

one or more queries.

The type of object created and edited by Query Studio. A query is a subtype of report.

query item

A representation of a column of data in a data source. It contains a reference to a database

column, a reference to another query item, or a calculation. Query items may appear in a model or

in a report.

query subject

A query subject can be defined as a collection of references to items of other query subjects, or expressed as an SQL expression that represents selected query items. These query items will be retrieved from objects such as tables, synonyms,views, and so on. Query subjects contain query items.

report

A set of data deliberately laid out to communicate business information. Depending on the

context, "report" may refer to report specification or report output.

While designing package you must avoid ….

·         Outer joins à may lead to performance issues, generally not required for data warehouse.

·         Fact to fact table joins à queries take longer time to run and may lead to cross product           join/Cartesian product (wrong output).  Union of queries is preferred over fact to fact join.

While designing the reports you must avoid….

·         ReportNet Union à gives poor performance, instead implement it in underlying SQL in report itself.

·          Unnecessary joins à Do not include columns from dimension tables if it is present in fact table.  This improves report performance (e.g., if a fiscal year col. is available in fact table, then don’t use calendar dimension table)

How to hide Select All in cognos8

1)How to hide Select All | Deselect All for all prompts in the prompt page for 8.3:

 For this consider the following prompt page where the user hasto give the product prompt  as a f

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">;

// hiding select All/deselect All in Cognos 8.3 form.

for(j=0;j<document.links.length;j++)

{

y=document.links[j];

if (y.id.indexOf("SELECT") != -1) document.getElementById(y.id).style.display='None';

}

</script>

2) To hide Select All | Deselect All for the second prompt only in a prompt page with two prompts for 8.3:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

// hiding select All/deselect All in Cognos 8.3 form.

for(j=0;j<document.links.length;j++)

{

y=document.links[j];

if (j==2 || j==3)

{

if (y.id.indexOf("SELECT") != -1) document.getElementById(y.id).style.display='None';

}

}

</script>

Note: The values for the "j" variable for the if (j==2 || j==3) statement above represent the 3rd and 4th link in the two prompt multi-select prompt page. The first and second link would be referenced with a value of j=0 and j=1. 

How to remove row in a crosstab when a specific column (maybe nested) in the crosstab has the measure value of 0, using OLAP data source

Resolving the problem

1. In the Report Studio, under the relevant query, create a new Data Item
2. In the expression definition of this new data item, put:

aggregate(currentMeasure within set [Column Data Item])

3. Save this data item as [Aggregate(Column)]
4. Create a new data item, this time in the expression definition, put something like this:

filter([Row Data Item], tuple([Aggregate(Column)],[Measure]) > 0)
and save it as [New Item].

[Row Data Item] is the data item for the crosstab row. Should the author use actual members for the row, it is recommended to create another additional Data Item to contain a set() function, which in turn contains each individual member that the author chooses. Use this data item in the filter() function above, and then use [New Item] as the crosstab row.

Attached below are report specs using Great Outdoors Company in 8.3 for nested and normal columns.

How to apply zero-suppression to a list report

You need to create a calculated data item that is the total of all your numeric columns and create a filter that would compare against zero.

Steps:

1.     Create a calculated data item that totals all of your numeric columns that could have a zero value. This data item will not be be used in the report but will act as filter in the underlying query.

2.     Create a detailed filter in the query that compares the data item created in item 1 and compare it against a zero value. To display a row we are testing for a row is not equal to zero [calculatedsum] <> 0.

3.     Ensure that the application of the filter is done after aggregation.

Run the report. You should see that any rows that have all zeros in the value columns will not be displayed.