Defect - Duplicate Queries generated by Cognos

I seem to be on a ride running into numerous defects over the last couple of months. The latest one being similar duplicate queries generated by Cognos in a particular scenario.

As can be seen from the screenshot, Cognos generates 2 queries with no differences and both having the same name.

This happens in the below scenario:

When you have a singleton object before all other Objects in the report.
And when you have Prompt Macro as the first filter in the first object of the report.

And if you have value prompts after the singleton but before the first chart/list/crosstab object, then these queries get duplicated as shown below:

When each query counts towards performance, this isn't good.

So the work-around is to have a Required prompt without macros as the first prompt in a list/crosstab/chart object. If one doesn't exist create a dummy required filter to get around-this.

Using Text Wrap property instead of setting Widths

A lot of beginners in Cognos try to set list column widths to fit data to avoid text wrapping rather than using the White Space property. This is probably because the property name is misleading.

So to all those beginners who didn't know, set the White Space property of a list column to No Wrap instead of trying to set fixed widths if the intention is to avoid the data displayed in the column from wrapping.

Defect - Advanced Drill Link with Higher level Default prompt selections?

We have report with a value prompt on the report page and its default value is controlled by a prompt macro. The report also has a Pie chart and a Crosstab both based on different queries whose data items are linked for drills.The report is based on a cube.

The observation is that when the default value for the prompt is set to a higher level of the dimension say the year level in a Time dimension and when a user selects any value from the drop down and does a drill on the pie chart categories member the drill links don't work in the Crosstab only the pie chart gets updated.

This happens only the first time a selection is made. Selecting any other value and executing a drill on the pie chart categories and then selecting the same value and then executing a similar drill does not re-produce the above error.

This also does not happen if you execute the drill without making any selections. Any selection later doesn't re-produce the error.

So basically it seems like this happens for the  first selection made and when you have a higher level member set as the default through a prompt macro. Once a drill is executed and then any number of drill executions later doesn't re-produce the error.

This has been observed in a Pie - Crosstab combination and not in a Stacked Chart - Crosstab combination.

Some screenshots against Go Sales Cube to demonstrate the observation against a simmplified requirement:

First run of the report:


On selection of January 2004 from the drop down and then executing a drill up on Pie chart for January 2004:


The drill does not get reflected in the crosstab.

On selection of Q1 2004 and then executing a drill up on the Pie chart:


The drill is reflected in the crosstab.

When January 2004 is set as the default, first run of the report:


On selection of February 2004 and then executing a drill up on the pie chart:

The drill is reflected in the crosstab.
 

Cognos Insight

To add on to what has been mentioned in the previous article, this new component from IBM allows users to pull in data from a number of sources and not just TM1 as I had wrongly assumed.

From a licensing perspective this requires Advanced Business Author role or above for BI and TM1 contributor role or above for TM1. The tool integrates with Cognos 10.1.1 and TM1 10.1.

Here's what else I could find on IBM site:

You have all the capabilities of the Insight Standard Edition plus:
• Import data from existing Cognos reports
• Share files using the Cognos Connection portal
• Publish and distribute content to the server for managed deployment
• Extend content created with Insight to other Cognos tools and interfaces like mobile and Web
• Use Insight as the interface to contribute to a managed planning process

Since this is a stand-alone desktop tool, I am curious as to how it fits architecturally with other Cognos components and how requests are executed. Since it supports in-memory analysis is this in-memory analysis handled on BI server or on the client machine? And if it uses a TM1 engine behind the scenes, how do requests flow when reports are used as sources?

If anyone has any inputs, questions, concerns as always please let us know.

All New IBM Cognos Insight

IBM recently released a new component IBM Cognos Insight bundled with TM1 10. This is not related to Business Insight and is a separate Dashboarding component. I am yet to read up and evaluate this so expect more on this from me in later articles. The demos look cool though.

The tool seems to be more inclined to supporting TM1 10 and has an in-memory analytic engine with write-back capabilities. Visually too this looks so much better than our Business Insight.

But as always with any new release there are bound to be disappointments so the wish list here too is huge.

More to follow.

Multi Tab Portlets cause CPS PAG Error

When using Multi Tabs portlet as the first tab in Cognos Connection, users might run into CPS-PAG-4801 error. The error is not consistent and refreshing the page renders the multi-tab portlet without error. THis does not happen when the multi tab portlet is placed after any of the other tabs.

This has been logged as a defect and is due to authentication information not being passed on to the portlet when used as the first tab.

The only work around is to use a HTML Viewer and have the URL for the Multi Tab portlet included in the HTML Viewer.

Optimized Master Detail relationships with DQM, not really

Here's an extract from IBM site on optimized master detail relationship using DQM (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cbi/v10r1m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.swg.ba.cognos.dyn_query.10.1.0.1.doc%2Fc_master-detail.html):

Optimized master detail relationships in reports

Master detail relationships allow you to deliver information that would otherwise require two or more reports.

You specify a relationship between the query in the master data container and the query in the detail data container. For example, you can combine a master list with a detail chart. The list can contain product lines and the chart can show details for each product line.

With the dynamic query mode, master detail relationships are optimized. IBM® Cognos® pushes the master query as a separate edge to the detail query. Therefore, instead of sending one detail query to the data source for each master value, only one query is sent for HTML, PDF, and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software output formats.
That is not the case though when you check the profile tree logs. Master detail relationships, still execute the old fashioned way with DQM. I had this confirmed by IBM as well that this is as per design.
I am posting this so developers don't get misleaded by the article. Wish IBM removes the misleading article.

 

Business Insight - Limitations

A lot has been said and written about Business Insight. While you will come across a lot of articles highlighting the good, jazzy and the positive features of Business Insight, I wanted to focus on some limitations in the use of Business Insight.

Business Insight being a new technology/component from IBM, it has a lot of bugs that need to be fixed before we can benefit from the use of Insight. Most of these bugs that I have come across have to do with drill ups/downs. I consider these to be really important issues to be addressed as the primary shift in datasources is from relational to dimensional. The issues have been listed out in the article:

Another big drawback that I find is with respect to prompts. Though Slider and Check-box List prompts are available, Insight lacks the availabilty of value prompts, date prompts. These need to be created inside of reports and users need to drag them into the Insight reports to make use of them. Value prompts when dragged into Insight are not jazzy enough to blend with the other components on the screen.

Non Auto-Submit Value prompts when dragged into Insight cause individual Apply/Cancel buttons to appear for each such prompt.

The available Slider and List Box prompt has another disadvantage. When these prompts are set inside Insight, users need to select a list of values that need to appear in the prompts. Though this makes sense when you think of Insight as an ad-hoc tool, how often do you come across users who are willing to spend a few minutes to create an ad-hoc dashboard. More often than not, the requirement is to have pre-authored dashboards and in such cases this limitation is huge. New values don't show up unless the user goes in and modifies the prompts each time.

Another disappointment is you cannot convert the whole dashboard into different formats. You can only convert individual widget into various formats. So much for being able to take a snapshot of your dashboard.

Even though Insight was meant to be an ad-hoc dashboard environment but gone are the days when dashboards were static. Users require ability to slice and dice their key metrics data. With the line between Dashboards and Reports are getting blurred at some places it would be great to have more prompting capability in Insight.

Insight is a CPU intensive tool. Heavy dashboards can take a while to render.

Having dished out about Insight limitations, I need to say, I really liked the slider feature. Wish we had such components available in RS. It would be great to have some of the jazzy looking Active Report Prompt components also available in RS.

Your thoughts on Insight?

Hide/Display Drill Through Links based on Levels

In a dimensional report, how do you hide/display drill through links based on the levels of a dimension when drills are enabled on the dimension? Layout calculations/Style Variables/Conditional Style conditions do not support MDX functions. So how do we identify the level of the dimension that you are at and apply conditions to the drill through links to hide or display them?

This is where JavaScript comes to our rescue. As always, JS should be used at the developer's discretion as they are not supported by IBM and also these get executed at the client side and hence should not be used in data intensive reports.

Solution:

Step 1: Create the base report and enable drills in the report.

Step 2: Create the drill through links in the crosstab for the Quantity measure.

Step 3: Insert another Quantity data item along side the Quantity measure without drill through links.

Step 4: Insert a singleton, pointing to the Crosstab Query and insert a calculated data item: Ordinal - ordinal(level(item([Product line],0))).

Step 5: Insert 2 HTML Items before and after the singleton.

             <div id='Lvl'>
             </div>

Step 6: Insert 2 HTML items before and after the Quantity measure in the crosstab that doesn't have the drill through link.

             <div id='NoLinks'>
             </div>
Step 7: Insert 2 HTML items before and after the Quantity measure in the crosstab that has the drill through link.

             <div id='Links'>
             </div>

Step 8: Insert a HTML item below the crosstab. Include the below JS:

<script>
var Lvl = document.getElementById('Lvl');
var LvlSpan = Lvl.getElementsByTagName('span')[0];
var LvlVal = LvlSpan.innerHTML;
if(LvlVal==4)
{
for(i=0;i < document.getElementsByTagName('div').length;i++)
{
if(document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].id=='Links')
{
document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].style.display = 'block';
}
if(document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].id=='NoLinks')
{
document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].style.display = 'none';
}
}
}
else
{
for(i=0;i < document.getElementsByTagName('div').length;i++)
{
if(document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].id=='Links')
{
document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].style.display = 'none';
}
if(document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].id=='NoLinks')
{
document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].style.display = 'block';
}
}
}
</script>

Note: These techniques use JavaScript against underlying report objects in a IBM Cognos 8 BI report. For this reason, there is no guarantee that reports created using these techniques will migrate or upgrade successfully to future versions without requiring modifications. Any such modifications are the responsibility of the report designer.

<report xmlns="http://developer.cognos.com/schemas/report/8.0/" useStyleVersion="10" expressionLocale="en-us">     <modelPath>/content/folder[@name='Samples']/folder[@name='Models']/package[@name='GO Sales (analysis)']/model[@name='model']</modelPath>         <queries>      <query name="Query1">       <source>        <model/>       </source>       <selection><dataItemMeasure name="Quantity"><dmMember><MUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Sales].[Quantity]</MUN><itemCaption>Quantity</itemCaption></dmMember><dmDimension><DUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Sales]</DUN><itemCaption>Sales</itemCaption></dmDimension><XMLAttributes><XMLAttribute name="RS_dataType" value="1" output="no"/></XMLAttributes></dataItemMeasure><dataItemMeasure name="Unit cost"><dmMember><MUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Sales].[Unit cost]</MUN><itemCaption>Unit cost</itemCaption></dmMember><dmDimension><DUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Sales]</DUN><itemCaption>Sales</itemCaption></dmDimension><XMLAttributes><XMLAttribute name="RS_dataType" value="2" output="no"/></XMLAttributes></dataItemMeasure><dataItemMeasure name="Revenue"><dmMember><MUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Sales].[Revenue]</MUN><itemCaption>Revenue</itemCaption></dmMember><dmDimension><DUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Sales]</DUN><itemCaption>Sales</itemCaption></dmDimension><XMLAttributes><XMLAttribute name="RS_dataType" value="2" output="no"/></XMLAttributes></dataItemMeasure><dataItemLevelSet name="Product line"><dmLevel><LUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Products].[Products].[Product line]</LUN><itemCaption>Product line</itemCaption></dmLevel><dmDimension><DUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Products]</DUN><itemCaption>Products</itemCaption></dmDimension><dmHierarchy><HUN>[Sales (analysis)].[Products].[Products]</HUN><itemCaption>Products</itemCaption></dmHierarchy></dataItemLevelSet><dataItem name="Ordinal"><expression>ordinal(level(item([Product line],0)))</expression></dataItem></selection>      </query>     </queries>     <layouts>      <layout>       <reportPages>        <page name="Page1"><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="pg"/></defaultStyles></style>         <pageBody><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="pb"/></defaultStyles></style>          <contents>           <singleton name="Singleton1" refQuery="Query1">    <contents><HTMLItem>    <dataSource>     <staticValue>&lt;div id='Lvl'&gt;</staticValue>    </dataSource>   </HTMLItem><textItem><dataSource><dataItemValue refDataItem="Ordinal"/></dataSource></textItem><HTMLItem>    <dataSource>     <staticValue>&lt;/div&gt;</staticValue>    </dataSource>   </HTMLItem></contents>   </singleton><crosstab refQuery="Query1" horizontalPagination="true" name="Crosstab1">            <crosstabCorner><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="xm"/></defaultStyles></style><contents/></crosstabCorner>                                  <noDataHandler>             <contents>              <block>               <contents>                <textItem>                 <dataSource>                  <staticValue>No Data Available</staticValue>                 </dataSource>                 <style>                  <CSS value="padding:10px 18px;"/>                 </style>                </textItem>               </contents>              </block>             </contents>            </noDataHandler>            <style>             <defaultStyles>              <defaultStyle refStyle="xt"/>             </defaultStyles>             <CSS value="border-collapse:collapse"/>            </style>           <crosstabColumns><crosstabNode><crosstabNodeMembers><crosstabNodeMember refDataItem="Quantity" edgeLocation="e1"><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="ml"/></defaultStyles></style><contents><textItem><dataSource><memberCaption/></dataSource></textItem></contents></crosstabNodeMember></crosstabNodeMembers></crosstabNode><crosstabNode><crosstabNodeMembers><crosstabNodeMember refDataItem="Unit cost" edgeLocation="e2"><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="ml"/></defaultStyles></style><contents><textItem><dataSource><memberCaption/></dataSource></textItem></contents></crosstabNodeMember></crosstabNodeMembers></crosstabNode><crosstabNode><crosstabNodeMembers><crosstabNodeMember refDataItem="Revenue" edgeLocation="e3"><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="ml"/></defaultStyles></style><contents><textItem><dataSource><memberCaption/></dataSource></textItem></contents></crosstabNodeMember></crosstabNodeMembers></crosstabNode></crosstabColumns><crosstabFactCell><contents><textItem><dataSource><cellValue/></dataSource></textItem></contents><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="mv"/></defaultStyles></style></crosstabFactCell><crosstabRows><crosstabNode><crosstabNodeMembers><crosstabNodeMember refDataItem="Product line" edgeLocation="e4"><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="ml"/></defaultStyles></style><contents><textItem><dataSource><memberCaption/></dataSource></textItem></contents></crosstabNodeMember></crosstabNodeMembers></crosstabNode></crosstabRows><crosstabIntersections><crosstabIntersection row="e4" column="e1"><contents><HTMLItem>    <dataSource>     <staticValue>&lt;div id='NoLinks'&gt;</staticValue>    </dataSource>   </HTMLItem><textItem><dataSource><dataItemValue refDataItem="Quantity"/></dataSource></textItem><HTMLItem>    <dataSource>     <staticValue>&lt;/div&gt;</staticValue>    </dataSource>   </HTMLItem><HTMLItem>    <dataSource>     <staticValue>&lt;div id='Links'&gt;</staticValue>    </dataSource>   </HTMLItem><textItem><dataSource><dataItemValue refDataItem="Quantity"/></dataSource><reportDrills><reportDrill name="Drill-Through Definition1"><drillLabel><dataSource><staticValue/></dataSource></drillLabel><drillTarget><reportPath path="CAMID(&quot;Zynga_AD:u:2a4aa6305669dc40b168f26119e56912&quot;)/folder[@name='My Folders']/folder[@name='PoC']/report[@name='Tgt']"><XMLAttributes><XMLAttribute name="ReportName" value="Tgt" output="no"/><XMLAttribute name="class" value="report" output="no"/></XMLAttributes></reportPath></drillTarget></reportDrill></reportDrills><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="hy"/></defaultStyles></style></textItem><HTMLItem>    <dataSource>     <staticValue>&lt;/div&gt;</staticValue>    </dataSource>   </HTMLItem></contents></crosstabIntersection></crosstabIntersections></crosstab>          <HTMLItem>    <dataSource>     <staticValue>&lt;script&gt; var Lvl = document.getElementById('Lvl'); var LvlSpan = Lvl.getElementsByTagName('span')[0]; var LvlVal = LvlSpan.innerHTML; if(LvlVal==4) { for(i=0;i &lt; document.getElementsByTagName('div').length;i++) { if(document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].id=='NoLinks') { document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].style.display = 'block'; } } } else { for(i=0;i &lt; document.getElementsByTagName('div').length;i++) { if(document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].id=='NoLinks') { document.getElementsByTagName('div')[i].style.display = 'none'; } } } &lt;/script&gt;</staticValue>    </dataSource>   </HTMLItem></contents>         </pageBody>         <pageHeader>          <contents>           <block><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="ta"/></defaultStyles></style>            <contents>             <textItem><style><defaultStyles><defaultStyle refStyle="tt"/></defaultStyles></style>              <dataSource>               <staticValue/>              </dataSource>             </textItem>            </contents>           </block>          </contents>          <style>           <defaultStyles>            <defaultStyle refStyle="ph"/>           </defaultStyles>           <CSS value="padding-bottom:10px"/>          </style>         </pageHeader>         <pageFooter>          <contents>           <table>            <tableRows>             <tableRow>              <tableCells>               <tableCell>                <contents>                 <date>                  <style>                   <dataFormat>                    <dateFormat/>                   </dataFormat>                  </style>                 </date>                </contents>                <style>                 <CSS value="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;width:25%"/>                </style>               </tableCell>               <tableCell>                <contents>                 <pageNumber/>                </contents>                <style>                 <CSS value="vertical-align:top;text-align:center;width:50%"/>                </style>               </tableCell>               <tableCell>                <contents>                 <time>                  <style>                   <dataFormat>                    <timeFormat/>                   </dataFormat>                  </style>                 </time>                </contents>                <style>                 <CSS value="vertical-align:top;text-align:right;width:25%"/>                </style>               </tableCell>              </tableCells>             </tableRow>            </tableRows>            <style>             <defaultStyles>              <defaultStyle refStyle="tb"/>             </defaultStyles>             <CSS value="border-collapse:collapse;width:100%"/>            </style>           </table>          </contents>          <style>           <defaultStyles>            <defaultStyle refStyle="pf"/>           </defaultStyles>           <CSS value="padding-top:10px"/>          </style>         </pageFooter>        </page>       </reportPages>      </layout>     </layouts>    <XMLAttributes><XMLAttribute name="RS_CreateExtendedDataItems" value="true" output="no"/><XMLAttribute name="listSeparator" value="," output="no"/><XMLAttribute name="RS_modelModificationTime" value="2011-06-09T13:51:23.483Z" output="no"/></XMLAttributes><reportName>Src</reportName><drillBehavior drillUpDown="true" modelBasedDrillThru="true"/></report>

Business Insight Bugs 10.1.1

Some Business Insight bugs discovered in Cognos 10.1.1 version:

• Data formats and formats like Background colors, Fonts, borders not maintained after drill up/down.
• Drilling up on an object containing a single member brings back sibling members rather than parent members.
• Nested Metrics in crosstab columns lost on Drill up/down.
• Prompts not reflected on report objects after Drill up/down.
• Layout calculations in crosstabs lost on drill up/down.

Drill Through - Passing ParamDisplayValue of Parameters

How do you pass ParameDisplayValue of a Parameter through a drill through link rather than a ParamValue? This is a common requirement when you are dealing with passing OLAP values to Relational reports.

To do the above, set the "Property to Pass" property to "Member Caption" for the parameter in the Drill Through properties.

Hiding Left-Most Crosstab Columns

How do you hide left-most columns in a crosstab without impacting the alignment of other objects on the crosstab?

You may ask, why would anyone want to hide columns in the first place when you have the "Properties" property? That's because for some reason on 10.1.1 this doesn't seem to be working under certain scenarios. May be because there are prompt macros in the data items I want to use for drill throughs even though I don't want them on the layout. I had even set them on all possible edges. Once I have this figured out with IBM, I will update on why the Properties property isn't working.

Latest update from IBM on why the "Properties" property is not working in a crosstab against a cube in 10.1.1 is possibly because of a defect.

So as a work-around, I had to pull in the columns and hide them.

Properties that you need to set to hide the columns:

Background Color : White

Foreground Color : White

Font : 0px

Size & Overflow : 0px

Border : 1 pt None Black

Padding : 0px 0px 0px 0px

The only down-side is that when exported to excel you will see 2 empty columns to the left of the crosstab object.

TM1 & BI Integration issues

One point to be kept in mind while integrating TM1 and BI 10.1.1 is that it is best to stay away from special characters in the member names/aliases.

Another huge point that IBM hasn't confirmed yet but something that I am suspecting is that when you have the same members rolling up to different parent members TM1 makes each of those members unique by concatenating the entire path to the member with "^" character in the MUN. And this character causes the drill up/down feature to be disabled on 10.1.1 (not observed on 10.1).

Special characters like "&" in the member aliases not just in the MUN cause the screen to freeze when drill through links are clicked.

InScope Report Function

How do you display a measure with different data formats against different Series elements in a chart? This is where conditional style and InScope report function comes to the rescue.

Requirement: Display a chart with Revenue measured against Product Line members in the primary axis and against web Order Method against the secondary axis. Display Revenue with 3 decimal places against Product Lines and 2 decimal places against Web order method.

This requirement can be extended to display different data formats against different series members.

Solution:

Step 1: Create the chart with Revenue as the default measure, Product Line dragged into Primary Series and Web Order Method dragged into Secondary Series and Year dragged into Categories.

Step 2: Select Revenue and create an advanced conditional style with the expression as InScope(Web)

Set the format in the style properties for this condition.



Likewise create another advanced condition for Product Line.

Cognos 10 Chart Properties

While I was on the subjects of Cognos 10, thought I will write about some properties of the Charts that are positioned differently between the older versions of Cognos and the newer ones as I don't want people to get frustrated like I did trying to find some properties with the newer version.

The Line Style and Marker properties are now positioned on the Palette dialog box which according to me isn't meaningful.





I had spent considerable time trying to find these properties out that had almost given up with the newer charts and had planned on using the legacy charts and opening a ticket with IBM. Hope this helps others in some way.

Cognos 10 Prompts - New Features

As has been pointed out by Ziegenbart in his comments, with Cognos 10, you needn't use any Javascript to modify the value prompt title line. Cognos 10 provides properties through which you can control the first 2 lines of the prompts.

User Contribution [Ziegenbart]:

I've been using the properties of the value prompt itself to either customize or remove the header text. Super simple and no need to use javascript with the disclaimer that there is no guarantee it will work or won't break. (I'm using Cognos 10 btw).

The default selection for the "Header Text" under "Prompt Text" for the value prompt is "Automatic".

Click on the ellipsis to the right of "Automatic" in the "Header Text" property. Change the selection to "Specified text" and leave the text field empty.

The first two lines of the Value Prompt are now removed.

You can also use this to customize what the first line says to meet business needs by entering some text (e.g. "Please make selection")

You can manipulate many of the presentation elements of a value prompt using the properties menu.

Drills and JavaScripts - Conflicts

Most times, we have javascript codes inserted into our reports. Some of these codes could be harmless ones like displaying obects in tabbed modes. But it is advisable to analyze the impact of such code from an entire report functionality perspective. Dimensional reports with drills enabled re-run the reports with the drilled in objects and re-running reports may not be the intended functionality when you have JS codes.

Simple example, let us consider a report with JS for tabs displaying a chart and a crosstab with the chart being the default object displayed. User selects the crosstab tab and then drills up a level. Result, report displays the chart object at the drilled up level (if chart and crosstab use the same query items) since re-running the report re-runs the JS code and displays the default chart object. The user, instead might be expecting to see the crosstab report at the drilled up level.

Cognos BI and TM1 Integration

Before people start wondering if I am working on TM1, the answer is no. But I am working on using TM1 as a data source and hope to pick up on TM1 in due course.

Here are a couple of points that I think people who are planning on using TM1 as a datasource should consider:

• TM1 cubes require an explicilty declared Measure dimension for the cubes to get imported into Cognos.



• The cubes need to have named levels enabled on them for the levels to show up in Cognos.



• Description attribute needs to be named as Description for the rolevalue of memberDescription to work in Cognos.



• Cube based aggregation functions do not work on cells in TM1 that have rules defined on them.

Another point that I am still banging my head about is with security. With transformer cubes we have the cloak feature but that doesn't seem to be the case with TM1. Example, if a user has access to Products 1,2,3 belonging to Product Line 1 but does not have access to Products 4,5,6 belonging to the same Product Line, with a transformer cube when the user accesses Product Line 1 he will see the total specific to Products that he has access to but with Transformer he will see the total value of all the products belonging to the product line rather than the products that he has access to which accroding to me is a huge disadvantage. Still trying to work through this. Hope someone out there can shed more light on this.
 

Using Stored Procedures in Reports

Here's a simplified requirement that requires using stored procedures in reports to set values.

Requirement: Create a chart report to display Target Sales value. Provide users with option to set Target Sales Values that should get reflected when other users run the same report.

Solution:

Step 1: Create a simple Stored Procedure that inserts ProdId, Date and Target Value into the target table. For our example and for simplicity I have created a SQL Server Stored Procedure. The Stored Procedure should return a dummy value so that we can create a Data Query Stored Procedure in FM.

Stored Proecures are of 2 types - Data Query and Data Modification. Data Query Stored procedures are visible for use in report studio while Data Modification Stored Procedures are not visible for use in report studio.



Step 2: Import the Stored Procedure in FM and set the prompt values.

Step 3: Create a Prompted report to get the input values from the user. Insert text box prompts in the prompt page as shown below.



Step 4: In the report page drag the dummy return value and set the visible property to No. This will force the SP to get executed.Insert a text item to display a message to the users on sucessful execution of the Stored Procedure.



Step 5: Create the main report to display the chart object. Insert an HTML item to open the Prompted report:

HTML Item:

<script>
function SetValues()
{
window.open('<Prompted Report URL>','','width=400,height=400,menubar=no,toolbar=no');

}
</script>

<input type="button" value="Set Values" onclick="SetValues();">

Insert a RePrompt Button to refresh the report.

Dynamic Rows Per Page - Approach 2

In continuation with the last article where we discussed achieving dynamic rows per page using Database functions, in this article we will discuss the same using JavaScripting where the processing happens on the client side. As discussed in the previous article report developers should weigh their options before opting for either of these approaches.

Approach 2: Client Side Processing

Solution:

Step 1: Create a Rows Per Page value prompt with static choices of 5,10, 15.. and a default selection of 5. Set the name of the prompt to Rows.

Step 2: Create a simple list report and set the Rows Per Page property to a value higher than the total number of rows returned

Step 3: Insert HTML items before and after the list report

    HTML Item 1: <div id="ListTbl">

    HTML Item 2: </div>

Step 4: Now to create a Pagination component, create a table in the Page Footer with 4 columns. Insert HTML Items before and after the table.

    HTML Item 3: <div id="Paginate">

    HTML Item 4: </div>

Step 5: Create First Page, Prev Page, Next Page, Last Page components in the 4 columns as shown below:



    HTML Item 5: <a href="#" onClick="paginate( 1);">

    HTML Item 7: <a href="#" onClick="paginate(currentPage - 1);">

    HTML Item 9: <a href="#" onClick="paginate(currentPage + 1);">

    HTML Item 11: <a href="#" onClick="paginate(lastPage);">

    HTML Item 6, HTML Item 8, HTML Item 10, HTML Item 12: </a>

Step 6: Insert an HTML Item and include the below JavaScript code:

<script>
    //get the List Table object
    var ListTbl = document.getElementById("ListTbl");

    var Tbl = ListTbl.getElementsByTagName('table')[0];

    //get the rows per page prompt value selected

    var fW = getFormWarpRequest();

    var rowsPerPg = fW._oLstChoicesRows.value;

    //get the total number of rows in the list

    var rows = Tbl.rows.length;

    var currentPage = 1;

    //get the last page value

    var lastPage = Math.ceil(rows/rowsPerPg);

    var rowStart;

    var rowStop;

    function paginate(currentPage)
    {
        window.currentPage = currentPage;
        rowStart = (currentPage * rowsPerPg) - rowsPerPg + 1;
        rowStop = (currentPage * rowsPerPg) + 1;
        if(currentPage==lastPage)
        rowStop = rows;

        for(i=1; i < rows ;i++)
        {
            //hide the display of all rows
            Tbl.rows(i).style.display='none';
        }

        for(i = rowStart ; i< rowStop ; i++)
        {
            //set only the required rows to display
            Tbl.rows(i).style.display='block';
        }

        var Paginate = document.getElementById("Paginate");
        var PaginateTbl = Paginate.getElementsByTagName('table')[0];

        if(currentPage==1)
        {
            //hide First Page and Prev Page components when on Page 1
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(0).style.display = 'none';
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(1).style.display='none';
        }
        else
        {
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(0).style.display='block';
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(1).style.display='block';
        }

        if(currentPage==lastPage)
        {
            //hide Last Page and Next Page components when on Last Page
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(2).style.display='none';
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(3).style.display='none';
        }
        else
        {
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(2).style.display='block';
            PaginateTbl.rows(0).cells(3).style.display='block';
        }

    }

paginate(currentPage);

</script>

Note: This technique uses JavaScript against underlying report objects in an IBM Cognos 8 BI report. For this reason, there is no guarantee that reports created using this technique will migrate or upgrade successfully to future versions without requiring modifications. Any such modifications are the responsibility of the report designer.