Book Image

IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook

By : Abhishek Sanghani
Book Image

IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook

By: Abhishek Sanghani

Overview of this book

Cognos Report Studio is widely used for creating and managing business reports in medium to large companies. It is simple enough for any business analyst, power user, or developer to pick up and start developing basic reports. However, when it comes to developing more sophisticated, fully functional business reports for wider audiences, report authors will need guidance. This book helps you understand and use all the features provided by Report Studio to generate impressive deliverables. It will take you from being a beginner to a professional report author. It bridges the gap between basic training provided by manuals or trainers and the practical techniques learned over years of practice. This book covers all the basic and advanced features of Report Authoring. It begins by bringing readers on the same platform and introducing the fundamental features useful across any level of reporting. Then it ascends to advanced techniques and tricks to overcome Studio limitations.Develop excellent reports using dimensional data sources by following best practices that development work requires in Report Studio. You will also learn about editing the report outside the Studio by directly editing the XML specifications. Provide richness to the user interface by adding JavaScript and HTML tags. The main focus is on the practical use of various powerful features that Report Studio has to offer to suit your business requirements.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Highlighting hidden items


We have seen that it is possible and in fact suggested to turn on the option of Show Hidden Objects from visual aids. This recipe will show you a best practice related to that.

Getting ready

We will use the GO Data Warehouse (Query) package for this. Open Cognos Report Studio and turn on the Show Hidden Object feature from visual aids.

How to do it...

  1. Create a simple list report with Product line, Product type, and Product name as columns.

  2. Select the Product type columns and turns its Box Type to None. As we have chosen to Show Hidden Items, we can still see the column on report page.

  3. Now from the Background Color property, select yellow.

  4. Run the report to test it.

How it works...

In this recipe, we have hidden a column by changing its Box Type. As this item is now not going to appear on the report, we have the liberty to change its visual appearance. We changed its background color to yellow, which clearly distinguishes the item from the rest.

Next time, when any other developer...