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

Conditional block: Many reports in one


The purpose of this recipe is to introduce you to a very useful and powerful control of Report Studio called Conditional block.

Users want a report on sales figures. They want the facility to split the numbers by product lines, periods, or retailer region, any one at a time. For convenience purposes, they don't want three different reports, instead they are looking for one report with the facility to choose between the report types.

Getting ready

Create a report with three list objects. Define the list columns as follows:

  • List 1: Product | Product lines and Sales fact | Quantity.

  • List 2: Time dimension | Current year, Time dimension | Current month and Sales fact | Quantity.

  • List 3: Retailer site | Region and Sales fact | Quantity.

Define appropriate grouping, sorting, and aggregation for all the list objects. Make sure that all objects use different queries.

How to do it...

  1. We will start by creating a prompt for report type. Go to Page Explorer and add a...