10.2.1 Defects - Workspace

The below are against 10.2.1 DMR model using DQM mode.

For most of the defects the report has a crosstab with prompts on the report page to dynamically select rows and measures and a period tree prompt to select the period columns. The report has drills enabled.

Again, will update defect numbers as we get them. But that seems to be a time consuming process and am not the one involved.

Drill through lost on drill down

Drills not synched between chart and crosstab - Drill down on Product, Quarter combination in chart does not get reflected in crosstab

Drill on measures not synched between chart and crosstab - Drill down on fact cell intersection on chart does not reflect correctly in crosstab

Drill up and re-prompt doesn’t get reflected - Drill up on first run of the report and reset dimension. New dimension does not get reflected in objects

Resetting prompted widgets will re-prompt and then selecting different prompt values does not have any effect on the widgets.

Drill up/down and drill through doesn't pass all context values to the drill through report.

Charts - Drill and prompt on the same hierarchy does not reflect once drills are enacted - If a prompt dimension is used as series or categories then once a drill is acted upon the series/category re-prompting does not have any effect.

Drills get enabled and disabled intermittently on categories/rows and series/columns - Initially chart, crosstab do not have drills enabled on the time period series as set up in the report. Once drills are executed on the fact cells or on the chart intersections the drills become enabled on the time series.

Cognos 10.2.1 DQM DMR Defects - Part 2

Drill and Re select Dimension with Render Variable - Behaves differently if measure is based on data item vs measure based on prompt macro.

If 2 members are defined - one with a token prompt macro and another with an MDX expression defined on top of the first data item. If member sets are defined on the 2 members and drill behvaiour set for the first member to replace expression and the second expression to preserve. Drill up/down on one dimension and then resetting dimension and then drilling up/down does not work.

Prompt Macro and MDX Expressions - topCount with token prompt macro

Not all MDX expressions work on prompt macro. topCount does not work on a data item that has #prompt(,'token')#.

Prompt Macro and MDX Expressions - roleValue with MUN prompt macro

Not all MDX expressions work on prompt macro. roleValue does not work on a data item that has #prompt(,'memberUniqueName')#.

Periods to Date does not work as expected with any expression in the 2nd argument in CQM mode.

It has to be a member for the right result to be returned. Even if the expression returns a member, PTD does not work correctly and returns only one period. This is only in CQM mode.

I will list out a couple of Workspace defects in the next article.

10.2.1 DQM DMR Defects - Part 1

This is going to be quite a long list so am listing out only a few important ones and most of them relate to prompt macros and drills. These are all against 10.2.1 DMR model using DQM mode. I am  not going to explain in detail with images unless someone wants me to since there are too many. I will update the article with Defect Numbers as we receive them.

For most of the defects the report has a crosstab with prompts on the report page to dynamically select rows and measures and a period tree prompt to select the columns. The report has drills enabled.

Level Label Calculation does not work as expected when using prompt macro and drills.

When we use a data item with a prompt macro for crosstab rows to dynamically select the dimension, have drill enabled and have a query item to get Level Label using the prompt macro data item the level label does not get captured consistently.

When we switch between dimensions in the prompt and then drill up/down the level label data item does not get reflected.

To disable member and data cache at report level for testing, query is set to use DB only and Use Local Cache is set to no. This causes charts to work incorrectly.

Report has a period tree prompt with chart and crosstab displaying periods selected in the prompt. With Use Local Cache set to No, selection of periods in the tree prompt returns "No Data Available" message.

Prompt Macros with Data Item names in Value Prompts do not work

If the value prompt Use Value is set to a Data Item name rather than a level then drilling up on one of the dimensions and then re-setting the dimension prompt to another dimension does not have any effect.

Prompt Macros with Filter Calculations in Value Prompts do not work

Same as above except if the use value is set to include a filter expression then re-setting dimension does not work.

Drill and Prompt on same hierarchy - Drill up returns to selections made rather than following dimensional hierarchy.

Select 2012, Q1 2012, Q1 2013 and run report. Drill down on 2012. Drill up on Q1 2012 takes you back to 2012, Q1 2012, Q1 2013 instead of showing list of years which is confusing to the users.

By-Design Defects

How often have you been told that something that you think is a defect is actually by design? Doesn't that mean that the design is flawed then?

One such by-design-defect as I would like to call them was brought to my notice when some of my colleagues were trying to create a Reset Button functionality using only drill through to avoid using Java Scripts (since IBM does not support them) in 10.1.1.

What happens is Cognos retains the parameter values between the drill through runs even if you do not set the target parameter values in the drill through options. And this happens only in Cognos Viewer not in Report Studio Viewer.

The developers were informed that this was by design and were asked to use Javascript as a work around to achieve the functionality.

Have you come across any more of such by-design defects?

Defect - Burst Report Views through Event Studio

With 10.1.1 developers no longer see the "Burst Report" checkbox when trying to burst report views through Event Studio.

Create Jobs to burst report views and then use the Job inside of Event Studio to work around this.

Defect - Drill on MDX expression based members

Another one for the defect list and this in my opinion impacts a feature that is most important and that was working in earlier releases.

The defect relates to drill up functionality on MDX based lowest level members.

To re-create the issue:

Create an MDX based query calculation, say children of Cooking Gear.

Drill up on TrailChef Water Bag                                        

Drill up on Cooking Gear         
                                    

Drill down on Golf Equipment        
                                  

Drill down on Putters       
                                          

Drill down on Course Pro Putter   
                                    

Drill up on Course Pro Putter 109110           

                       











We see children of Cooking Gear (the list we started with) instead of Course Pro Putter.

Seems like the drill functionality in 10.1.1 has a lot of defects not just in Business Insight but in Cognos Viewer as well.

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.

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.