Cognos 10.2 - Prompt API announced

IBM has announced a fully documented and supported Prompt API with Cognos 10.2 allowing report authors to now safely use the supported JavaScript API in their reports to control prompts.

From the IBM website:

•The prompt API enables report authors to write JavaScript applications to customize the standard prompt functionality available in IBM Cognos Report Studio to query and set user selections, validate typed-in values using patterns, and set default values using expressions or query data for faster report authoring and a better report viewing experience.

Here's the link to the article:

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=AN&subtype=CA&htmlfid=897/ENUS212-282&appname=USN#toc

Limitation - Descendants MDX Function against Sets/Hierarchy

Though it is documented on the IBM Support Site that Descendants against Set functions may result in incorrect outcome, wish there was a way we could work around this limitation.

Some reasons why we may need Descendants function against a Hierarchy name rather than a member is:

• When we use TM1 as the source and have security set up such that a user has access to the lower level members of a dimension hierarchy but not to the root member of the hierarchy (which is perfectly valid in our business scenario).
• And we do not have named levels set up since we deal with unbalanced hierarchies, again valid when dealing with Accounts dimension.
• And we have multiple alternate hierarchies set up against a dimension.

So in this case we are limited to using the descendants function against the hierarchy name rather than the root member which does not result in the required outcome.

So one of the work-around in this case is to use other MDX expressions like Descendants with Except to build the set required.