Book Image

IBM Cognos 10 Report Studio Cookbook, Second Edition - Second Edition

Book Image

IBM Cognos 10 Report Studio Cookbook, Second Edition - Second Edition

Overview of this book

IBM 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, this book is designed to take the reader beyond the basics and into the world of creating more sophisticated, functional business reports.IBM Cognos 10 Report Studio Cookbook, Second Edition 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.Written in a recipe style, this book offers step-by-step instructions for IBM Cognos Report Studio users to author reports effectively, allowing a reader to dip in and out of the chapters as they desire. You will see a new fictional business case in each recipe that will relate to a real-life problem and then you will learn how to crack it in Report Studio. This book covers all the basic and advanced features of Report Authoring. It introduces 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. You will discover how to build and use Cognos Active Reports, a new addition in IBM Cognos 10. Provide richness to the user interface by adding JavaScript and HTML tags and using the different chart types introduced in IBM Cognos 10. The main focus is on the practical use of various powerful features that Report Studio has to offer to suit your business requirements. Learn numerous techniques and hacks that will allow you to make the best out of your IBM Cognos 10 Report Studio.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
IBM Cognos 10 Report Studio Cookbook Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using Report Studio's environmental options


In this recipe, you will learn about some environmental options that you can set in Report Studio to aid development.

Getting ready

Create a simple list report with Product line and Product as columns from the Products query subject.

How to do it...

In this recipe, we will examine some features in Report Studio that can be very helpful while creating your reports:

  1. Select the Product column. Using the Ancestor button in the Properties pane, select the List Column object as shown in the following screenshot:

  2. From the Properties pane, change the Box Type property to None:

  3. You will notice that you cannot see the Product column on the report page anymore. Now, assume that you want to change the Box Type property back to default. It is difficult to do it as you cannot select the column now.

  4. From the menu, select View | Visual Aids | Show Hidden Objects. You will notice that the Product column becomes visible.

    You can now select this column and change its properties...