What do you get with Print?

Instant access to your digital eBook copy whilst your Print order is Shipped

Paperback book shipped to your preferred address

Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats

Access this title in our online reader with advanced features

DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want

IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook

Chapter 2. Advanced Report Authoring

In this chapter, we will cover the following:

Adding cascaded prompts
Nested reports: defining master detail queries
Writing back to the database
Conditional formatting
Show negative numbers in red and brackets
New conditional styling with version 8.3 onwards
Conditional block—many reports in one
Drill link from crosstab intersections
Overriding crosstab intersection expression and drill

Running difference: Negative values in brackets and red

Business owners need to see the sales figures by months and their month-on-month difference.

If the difference is negative (fall in sales) then it needs to be shown in red and values need to be in brackets.

Getting ready

Create a simple list report with Time Dimension | Current year, Time Dimension | Current month, and Sales fact | Quantity as columns.

Group Current year and sort Current month ascending.

How to do it...

Add a new query calculation to the list. Define the expression as:
```
running-difference([Quantity])
```
Call this item as "Running Difference".
Open the Data Format properties for this calculation from Property list.
Set the Format type as Number and the Negative Sign Symbol as brackets ().
Now go to Condition Explorer and create a new condition variable of Boolean type. Define the condition as:
```
[Query1].[Running Difference] < 0
```
Call the variable as Show_Red.
Now go back to report page and select the Running Difference column...

Key benefits

Learn advanced techniques to produce real-life reports that meet business demands

Tricks and hacks for speedy and effortless report development and to overcome tool-based limitations

Peek into the best practices used in industry and discern ways to work like a pro

Part of Packt's Cookbook series-each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible

Description

Cognos Report Studio is widely used for creating and managing business reports in medium to large companies. It is simple enough for any business analyst, power user, or developer to pick up and start developing basic reports. However, when it comes to developing more sophisticated, fully functional business reports for wider audiences, report authors will need guidance. This book helps you understand and use all the features provided by Report Studio to generate impressive deliverables. It will take you from being a beginner to a professional report author. It bridges the gap between basic training provided by manuals or trainers and the practical techniques learned over years of practice. This book covers all the basic and advanced features of Report Authoring. It begins by bringing readers on the same platform and introducing the fundamental features useful across any level of reporting. Then it ascends to advanced techniques and tricks to overcome Studio limitations.Develop excellent reports using dimensional data sources by following best practices that development work requires in Report Studio. You will also learn about editing the report outside the Studio by directly editing the XML specifications. Provide richness to the user interface by adding JavaScript and HTML tags. The main focus is on the practical use of various powerful features that Report Studio has to offer to suit your business requirements.

Who is this book for?

If you are a Business Intelligence or MIS Developer (programmer) working on Cognos Report Studio who wants to author impressive reports by putting to use what this tool has to offer, this book is for you. You could also be a Business Analyst or Power User who authors his own reports and wants to look beyond the conventional features of Report Studio 8. This book assumes that you can do basic authoring, are aware of the Cognos architecture, and are familiar with Studio.

What you will learn

Learn basic and advanced options around sorting, filtering, and aggregation of data

Explore the powerful features of Report Studio—Conditional Formatting, Cascaded Prompts, Master-Detailed queries, and more

Achieve real business demands such as dynamic drill-though links, showing tooltips, minimum column width, prompt manipulation, and merged cells

Learn to edit reports outside Report Studio using XML editing

Develop sophisticated printer friendly reports

Overcome tool limitations such as row level formatting, timing report execution, handling missing images, and so on

Learn tips on report development time

Introduce best practices such as inserting comments, regression testing, and version controlling in your reports

Enhance the features of Report Studio by using macros

Work with dimensional models (DMRs and Cubes)

What do you get with Print?

Instant access to your digital eBook copy whilst your Print order is Shipped

Paperback book shipped to your preferred address

Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats

Access this title in our online reader with advanced features

DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want

Frequently bought together

€45.99

€46.99

€28.99

Total € 121.97

Duane A. Rochelle Jul 02, 2010

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for ideas to overcome some of many challenges encountered while trying to learn Cognos Report Studio.I work for a company which has recently made a decision to use the Cognos software platform for its performance reporting and data analysis activities. This encouraged me to attended training classes and read numerous technical books\articles on using Report Studio.For the last few months, I have been struggling to master some techniques needed to produce exceptional business reports using Report Studio. Most of the technical guides that I have read contained long drawn-out explanations that were difficult to understand.Within 1 week after purchasing the "IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook", I was able to use 3 techniques to overcome some challenges I was having in developing some reports.The author of this book describes his techniques in a simple but effective form using "Getting Ready", "How to do it...", "How it works..." and "There's more...". This makes it easy for readers to easily interpret how to apply the technique being described. I really like the section describing "How it works..." because this is usually not included in most technical guides.This is an excellent book and well worth the price.

Amazon Verified review

Vic Oct 06, 2010

There are a number of helpful hints and tips here. Some are dead on the money. However, trying to correlate his partial explanations of his examples, to actually applying it to closely related real world issues, is a no go. On one of the pages, he refers you back to IBM's documentation, that has no explanation of the code, and worse, he uses newer code and refers back to old code that won't work on other versions.I'm surprised they didn't edit the book for grammatical errors. Someone else posted on it. For the price, its really sad.

rvfizher995 Jul 22, 2015

Pure Garbage !! Never buy it please !!

IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook: Over 80 great recipes for taking control of Cognos 8 Report Studio

What do you get with Print?

Contact Details

Shipping Address

Billing Address

Key benefits

Description

Who is this book for?

What you will learn

Product Details

What do you get with Print?

Contact Details

Shipping Address

Billing Address

Product Details

Packt Subscriptions

Frequently bought together

Table of Contents

Recommendations for you

Customer reviews

People who bought this also bought

About the author

FAQs