Accessing Cognos Query Studio is really quite simple. There are a couple of ways to do so. The first option for accessing Cognos Query Studio is from the welcome screen. On the welcome screen, you will see an option that says Query my data, which will launch Cognos Query Studio and allow you to select a package to build a report from.

Alternatively, if you want to first navigate through Public Folders to the package that you are most interested in, you can choose Query Studio from the Launch menu. This is shown in the following screenshot:

Cognos Query Studio is going to open in the same browser window that you were using for navigation. This is a key feature to note as you will need to use the back navigation from Cognos Query Studio if you want to get back to Cognos Connection.

Once in Cognos Query Studio, you will see a blank area in the center where you can create your new query. Think of this blank area as your canvas and the menu on the left as your palette...