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.