subject	body
Managing corporate performance	The reason why management of performance in the corporate world has received so much attention is that it determines the profitability and, ultimately, the survival of the organisation. High performance organisations are success stories because of the effectiveness and efficiency in managing their operations. There are a number of factors that influence corporate performance. Organisational, managerial, leadership and environmental factors have all been found to affect performance. The part played by leadership is probably of greater significance in smaller organisations where the leader can exert more direct power and influence. While leadership is critical, it has been found to be effective in times of organisational growth, development and crisis. For the most part, the organisation requires maintenance. In such instances, the leader will, therefore, make little difference to the organisation’s performance. The subject of corporate performance has recently created anxiety and concern to decision-makers and strategy makers in the private and public sectors because of the economic challenges facing the country. Managers at all levels need a clear set of performance indicators that will assist them in managing the business. Unfortunately, in many organisations, the issue of managing performance at all levels becomes critical only when the organisation is in a crisis. The major problem the corporate world faces today in managing performance emerges when it comes to defining what to measure. Performance is a difficult concept in terms of both definition and measurement. Depending on the type of organisation, some treat performance as an end result of an activity while others would want to treat it as a process. Whatever definition one prefers, managing corporate performance poses a number of challenges for managers. A good performance measurement and management system should be derived from the company strategy and cascaded to the lowest level within the organisation. The approach that has been found to be very effective in managing performance is called the balanced scorecard. This concept has not only helped organisations define what they want to achieve, but has also helped many organisations to communicate key performance drivers and indicators to staff. A performance management system without the support of the top management within the organisation would not bring many benefits. For any system of performance measurement to work, the top people within the organisation need to drive it. Unfortunately, in many organisations, the issue of performance management has been relegated to the human resources department. This does not support the development of a performance culture in the organisation. All senior managers need to take a keen interest in managing performance. Employees in many organisations experience a lot of anxiety during periods of performance reviews. This results from the uncertainty regarding how they are going to be appraised. Despite an overdose of courses on performance measurement and management, managers still find it difficult to give an honest assessment of the subordinate’s performance. This problem has been experienced more in organisations that do not have a proper way of linking the performance system to the company’s strategy. These are the same organisations that are still measuring things like punctuality and other competency related dimensions. Unfortunately, when you measure competencies and personality-related variables, employees become defensive and do not cooperate as things of personality greatly affect an individual’s self- esteem. The best way to deal with this problem is to manage company performance within the concept of the balanced scorecard. This concept will enable the organisation to set goals and measures at each level of the organisation and devise ways of giving feedback to staff. The balanced scorecard system can also be used as a way of reporting corporate performance to the board of directors. Despite all these challenges, many organisations have gone a long way in putting systems in place to manage performance at all levels. In order to have effective performance management systems, organisations need to base their performance measurement system on their strategy. All this calls for more involvement by all stakeholders in creating a performance measurement system that is going to be acceptable to all employees. With a bit of effort, the challenges outlined above can be turned into opportunities for success. However, keeping leaders appropriately focused on performance management can prove difficult. Three important tactics can make a difference; keep the topic of performance management constantly "in front" of leaders, keep them involved in the system and its implementation. (courtesy of mnguwi)
Re: Managing corporate performance	You should start a BLOG.
PowerHouse Web uber alles	Having used PowerHouse and PH Web for over 10 year I think it is one of the BEST app dev tools around.  And PH Web makes it even better.  I can develop a robust app in PH Web in mucch less time than in Java or VB or .Net.
Re: PowerHouse Web uber alles	uber alles?
Re: PowerHouse Web uber alles	I believe it is Deutsch for "above/over all".  :)
Re: PowerHouse Web uber alles	It is -  only it spells with an "ü" or, on an English keyboard  ;), with "ue". Cheers Elisabeth (German and a PowerHouse-Junkie for more than 25 years now)
Re: PowerHouse Web uber alles	Fully Agreed! Now lets do a promotional image campaign. What would be the best place to start at? Hm, maybe inside Cognos...? Rgds Andy
Re: PowerHouse Web uber alles	UberAlles sounds much better than ReportNet  ;D Short and succint (perhaps I should move this thread to 'Wishlist') Welcome aboard guys - good to have a truly global membership.
How does DecisionStream compare with Informatica?	Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of using DecisionStream vs Informatica please?
Re: How does DecisionStream compare with Informatica?	My initial thoughts are: [b]DS strengths[/b] - metadata management - integration to COGNOS BI tools [b]Informatica strengths[/b] - flexibility - better performance when dealing with extremely large volumes of data - ETL is its primary business whereas COGNOS is a BI vendor that extended its product range to include an ETL tool
Re: How does DecisionStream compare with Informatica?	What do you mean by flexibility? Where can I see objective stats that show Informatica has better performance than DS?  Doesn't this also depend a lot on A) the RDBMS and machine use and B) how efficient the designer has built the ETL logic? Cognos is an ADT business that extended its product range to include BI.  It was doing ETL  years BEFORE BI (see PowerHouse QTP).  It has now moved on and extended its product range to include CPM/BPM applications.  I think that to say Cognos is a BI business is to say that Microsoft is an OS business or Oracle is a DB business or IBM is a hardware business.
Re: How does DecisionStream compare with Informatica?	In my experience The key diferentiators for Informatica are integration with data cleansing tools (like First Logic) and the ability to scale to multi server environments in order to increase throughput. DecisionStream has the ability to integrate with 3rd party apps, but only through job control and command line interface, or through custom development against an api (like creating a dll to reference within a function). On the scalable architecture point...once you have done everything you can in order to improve the efficiency of your etl code and application architecture (network, SAN, database), the only thing you can do is add processors and RAM. With Informatica you can add servers. However, DecisionStream has some novel dimensional functionality that is effective and easy to use. Managing surrogates, SCD's and late arriving facts is fantastic. The key problem for both is that it seems to take a certain kind of person to want to dig into them and really learn how to use them. There are so few quality developers out there...anybody here an expert level DS developer?
Link to CPM article	[url]http://www.businessforum.com/Comshare04B.html[/url]
Looks good	Nice site jonno! Love the colour scheme. Very extensive product list too.
Re: Looks good	ditto
Re: Looks good	Thanks D and J, a lot of blood, sweat, tears and obscenities went into this site
Re: Looks good	I've never even heard of some of these products. Are they really COGNOS?
Re: Looks good	marvelous effort that ...  congrats ... great to see !!!
Re: Looks good	Gee...I was hoping that we would have something like this. and now we have it. Great job and a big thanks Administrators and Moderators !! By the way, is there a training forum too? I have been working in Cognos Powerplay and Impromptu for 8 yrs and want to learn Reportnet. Did a little of that myself (Framework Manager, Query and Report Studios) but would be nice to go to a training. I had been to COGNOS training years ago for Powerplay, Impromptu, IWR, PPES, Upfront etc but now have to do it on my own and since COGNOS training is too expensive so does anybody know of any training center for Reportnet, preferably in California.  Sorry if this question is not proper for this forum.
Re: Looks good	Hi cognostechie, Thanks for registering as well as the great feedback! (Keep those posts coming) Not sure what you mean by training forum - can you elaborate? But feel free to pop any questions through the relevant board (or even an intro of yourself/company in the Intros board). Glad to have you on board. The COGNOiSe team
Re: Looks good	I think the poster means a discussion subject on Training. Another one might be for bugs, patches and other "gotchas" general to Cognos products or other software/hardware that one might use Cognos products with.  I don't mean a place to download patches from but rather a place to mention a certain patch exists to be downloaded from Cognos' site.  An example of a "bug" when using Cognos Impromptu and SQL Server RDBMS that I don't believe is documented and may be affecting other tools is if you use the data type MONEY in a SQL Server table the results in Impromptu IWR will be unpredictable.  E.g. $1,234,567 may be displayed on the report as $1,567.  Instead of MONEY use either FLOAT or DECIMAL as the datatype and if you can't change the table use a view and a CAST() or CONVERT() function of the column.
Re: Looks good	You are welcome Administrator. What I meant by the training forum is a forum which people could use for this: 1> Freshers who have no idea or very little idea about Cognos could inquire on which products they should get trained on (we could tell them that depending on their background/education/interest etc). Where to go for training. Now this would be difficult as there are very few training centers apart from COGNOS itself (atleast in US). 2> Institutes that provide training could post their ads here. This could be good because their previous students could post their experiences so the newbies get to know in advance what to expect and don't get cheated if the institute is bad. 3> People could ask questions on certification etc. Ofcourse, no copyrighted material to be transferred thru this forum. That is illegal anyway. Basically, for people who want to inquire something related to training and who provide such trainings. It could be helpful for freshers mainly and also for experienced Cognos experts who wish to expand their knowledge.
Re: Looks good	Many Cognos partners provide training, some even have their own facilities. My clients have used Sky Solutions in Chicago for example even though Cognos has facilities there.
Re: Looks good	As Blue has pointed out in another thread, Cognos is *first* an ADT company. So let's put the ADT section at the top of the home page so I don't have to scroll halfway down the page to get to the important PowerHouse section. Scorecarding? -- put it at the bottom!
Re: Looks good	;D Thanks for your feedback JWP. I must admit trying to figure out the composition and order of the boards was a bit of a nightmare so in the end we tried to follow the same outline as that used in COGNOS.com.  But the problem we found was that a lot of applications were not shown and the newer products seemed to be "shoehorned" into very broad (and sometimes unrelated) headings. So, being an democratic site we took a vote and went with the current format - not to say that if others express the same opinion that we are at all averse to moving ADT up the order. So please post your opinions and we'll let the community have the final say. In the meantime, this link should save you the extra key/mousestrokes: http://cognoise.com/community/index.php?action=collapse;c=6;sa=expand#6 PS. two of our moderators (Blue being one) are PowerHouse fanatics so I get an earful everytime this topic is raised! Thanks for the post JWP and welcome aboard.
Re: Looks good	Hi Administrator, I'd just like to add to the chorus of voices saying "what a great site".  I think the current layout is intuitive and easy to use, and as a long-standing PowerHouse fanatic myself, it's great to see it included in the list of topics open for discussion, even if it isn't top of the list! :-) On the subject of a training forum, maybe we could suggest that these kinds of questions initially get posted to the General Discussion area, and if there turns out to be a big demand, maybe then we could consider setting up a dedicated Training topic?  In the meantime, I'm sure that there's enough experience within the current list of members to be able to field most of the enquiries from people new to Cognos products and unsure of which training to take. Thanks for all your hard work in setting up and running this site. Best regards, MF.
Re: Looks good	Aw shuks  ::) You're making me blush Just for that I'll have to move PH up the order (at least for the the ETL et al section) Agree with your thoughts on the training forum but prepared to go with the will of the Cognoids..
Re: Looks good	and how about changing the emoticons...ones that don't have the tribal looks.
Re: Looks good	About the Reportnet training that I mentioned earlier, I found out a way. Cognos has CBT's which are good. Problem solved.
Re: Looks good	Congrats to the COGNOiSe community - [color=Orange][b][size=20pt]1000 high-quality posts [/size][/b][/color] since 13th of July 2005!
Re: Looks good	Let's have a drink on that :D:D  Congrats to you all!!!
DecisionStream vs Informatica	Should we include any others?
Re: DecisionStream vs Informatica	Perhaps.  But Informatica appears to be the "flavour of the month" right now and as this is a forum about Cognos products I feel a comparison of just these tools is warranted.  I would like to hear from people who have used both tools professionally.
Re: DecisionStream vs Informatica	Great topic, i surfed for comparisons between the two and there aren't any
Re: DecisionStream vs Informatica	[quote author=legSPINNER link=topic=7.msg9#msg9 date=1121221068] Should we include any others? [/quote] Ascential DataStage recently re-branded as IBM WebSphere DataStage should be included. However, I've only had experience of DataStage so cannot offer any comparison with the other tools mentioned. nrh.
Re: DecisionStream vs Informatica	I agree, I think we should have a new poll that includes DataStage, DTS, Data Junction, Oracle Warehouse Builder, are there any others?
Re: DecisionStream vs Informatica	In 2000 I did some investigation for GE on ETL and EAI tools available in the marketplace.  There were over 400! I think that we should just sick to comparing 2 tools at a time based on forum member's interests.
Drillthrough error	I am trying to create a drill-through from PP cube to PP report but keep getting this error message "The request failed because there is no valid cube mapping to handle the request" steps leading up to error: * load cube with PP for windows and save my view as test.ppx * in transformer, i open cube properties, tick 'allow drill-through', add a custom report 'c:\cognos\cer4\bin\test.ppx' * update the cube * open PPES server administration and insert my new report * insert cube, then open its properties and change drill-through settings to: powerplay cubes= enabled powerplay windows target: cognos:8010 powerplay web target: http://cognos/cognos/cgi-bin/ppdscgi.exe Any ideas?
Re: Drillthrough error	Does the drill through work for client only use?  ie is it falling over when using though your Enterprise Server? Ensure that the cube and ppx are registering with your PP Enterprise Server. cheers DW
Re: Drillthrough error	dwood09, your absolutely right - i'm an idiot. i had it pointing to a local cube. thank you
COGNOS vs Business Objects	COGNOS vs BO
Re: COGNOS vs Business Objects	not  that we'd be biased or anything  ;)
Re: COGNOS vs Business Objects	[move]BY FAR!!![/move]
Re: COGNOS vs Business Objects	Cognos has 20+ products in its inventory covering everything from application development to data mining.  Business Objects is only reporting and even then only limited OLAP if you don't include the recently purchased Crystal Reports.  The latter is not much better than Access for report writing and depends on the report writers SQL expertise. Cognos report writers (Quiz, Inquizitive, Impromptu, Query and ReportNet) require only a limited knowledge of SQL (or even none at all) by the user and rarely does the designer even see any SQL. Cognos and Business Objects approach OLAP quite differently.  Some people I have spoken to prefer the BO technology and find reporting against a BO cube easier/faster.  I've been using Cognos PowerPlay for over 10 years so I a little biased towards it. Business Objects has no application development, ETL, data mining, or purely web based tools not does it sell applications and financial tools.  That being said, didn't Hyperion buy Business Objects recently?
Re: COGNOS vs Business Objects	Setting aside the brainwashing we have all received  :D, I do think Cognos is better.  We have more breadth of tools and possibilities.  It is interesting however that if you talk to Cognos, BO, and Hyperion users they are all happy with the tools and think thier tool is the best.  Which for us means that Business Intelligence rocks.  Without ReportNet however, I don't think Cognos would be doing well now.  As to the SQL knowledge in ReportNet specifically, while a consumer and a business analyst does not need to be a guru, the admin and developer surely do.
Re: COGNOS vs Business Objects	Neither. I would point you in the direction of BIRT from the eclipse foundation. This is an open source Java based reporting solution. If you do not know how to drag and drop items onto a Report Studio report for e.g. Cognos support would be happy to help you. For anything more complex they simply fall apart. With open source you can see the code and solve the problem yourself. NKT
CPM	Corporate Performance Management (CPM) represents a renewed focus on quantitative management, a "management by the numbers," using insight gained from data analysis and performance reporting. CPM has moved to the forefront of executive discussions for two main reasons. First, dramatic increases in enterprise data make CPM more practical. Second, and more importantly, stakeholders demand that management deliver predictable execution, operational efficiency and corporate accountability, which collectively make CPM more imperative. Driven by technology and business, CPM combines management methodologies, such as Balanced Scorecard and Six Sigma, with long-standing business needs for executive reporting and budgeting, plus newer business needs for financial planning tools and enterprise-wide, Web-based analysis and reporting. Reflecting this combination of analytical and operational needs, CPM technology is provided by three vendor types: Business Intelligence (BI), niche applications, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). With the analytical and operational split for CPM technology at roughly 80/20, BI is the dominant enabling technology.
Grant access to active directory user	How do I make a new user in active directory a report writer? Thanks
Re: Grant access to active directory user	Firstly, the authority for delegated administration needs to be set up for Reportnet. Ensure that the given server name or named account for starting the ReportNet service is set up in the Active Directory properties as an authority for delegated adminstration. Without these permissions, ReportNet is  unable to fully read all user properties from the Active Directory server.
Commentary	Will Metrics Manager allow you to post commentary at the KRA (parent level) as well as the KPI (child level)?
Re: Commentary	Commentary can only be entered at the KPI or Metric level ... however you could consider producing Metrics for your Key Result Areas as well ... there would be no link between the two though!!! cheers, DW
Re: Commentary	Can anyone tell how to learn Cognos Matric Manager
Re: Commentary	I did the online course via cognos.com for about $100 and it was pretty good. http://support.cognos.com/servlet-cs/etraining?pg=desc&COURSECODE=41737&CBT=1 depending on where you are, there would be certified partners that run courses.
Re: Commentary	We had a Cognos pre-sales techo assist with install and prep for prototype ... It was a really quicjk product to pick up and run with.  I spent most of my time in the prototype phase preparing automation procedures that facilitates the dynamic creation of scorecards and metrics as the organisational hierarhcy changes.  All in all, a pretty good product out of the box!  I suggest get a demo, install and play! good luck.  If you've got specific questions let us know. cheers, DW
Importing User classes from Access Manager	We have set up user classes in Access Manager for our existing 7.1 (pre ReportNet) installation, and am preparing for the big move to CRN.  Can anyone advise if there is a way of using these Access Manager user classes as Groups, rather than the default reference made as Roles. For example we have Finance, Payroll, Engineering user classes, which we would like to bring through to CRN as Groups, rather, CRN is seeing them as Roles. Hopefully we don't have to re-create all the groups in CRN and convert all Access Manager User Class' to Roles!?! thanks, DW
Re: Importing User classes from Access Manager	Based on Q&A in a webinar I attended a couple of months ago I think there is no easy way to migrate your security info from Access Manager.
Re: Importing User classes from Access Manager	Does CRN have an embedded Access Manager-type module?
Re: Importing User classes from Access Manager	Thanks Blue ... I was afraid of that :( ... Chias, CRN uses external LDAP services / interfaces, such as Access Manager to confirm that a user is who they say they are, and then facilitates the creation of roles and groups (similar in concept to User classes) to define what the will have access to. cheers
Isn't Viz a scorecarding tool?	Most of the Cognos demos I've seen use Viz as a scorecarding tool.  Shouldn't it be grouped under that classification?
Re: Isn't Viz a scorecarding tool?	I'm not so sure that it would be classed as purely a scorecarding tool. I think the key selling point of Viz is the graphical modelling of one's data. Whilst scorecarding may incorporate a graphical component, it is much more than having pretty pictures to go with the numbers. My 2 cents..anyway The clients I have don't really use Viz much. I'm interested to hear about client takeup rates.
Re: Isn't Viz a scorecarding tool?	Hi Blue, Viz is a visualization tool.  It is a multi-colored, three dimensional cherry on top.  It gives you ability to view the data in colorful displays and gages instead of simple crosstabs.  It is integrated with other Cognos tools and gets its data from PowerPlay for instance so you can do drilling.  It is not however a scorecarding tool and from what I have heard it is "going away".  Its functionality is built into Cognos 8 directly into Report Studio.
Re: Isn't Viz a scorecarding tool?	OK, now I'm puzzled.  What do people define as a scorecarding tool?  AFAIK scorecarding involves: 1. identify KPIs (key performance indicators) 2. collect and formulate data to measure KPIs and store in an accessable data store. 3. report the KPI values collected 3a. if by number in an OLAP tool, or some web based reporting tool like IWR or CRN. 3b. if by graphic in a visualisation tool such as Vizualiser. Can someone correct me if my assumptions are incorrect? Can someone give me an exemple of a tool that is designed PRIMARILY for scorecarding?
Re: Isn't Viz a scorecarding tool?	G'day Blue, If you look on the Cognos website, Cognos Metrics Manager is listed as a scorecarding tool. It allows metrics to be grouped within metric types, and assembled onto scorecards at various levels.  It includes its own diagrams etc, and allso allows links through to underlying reports in Powerplay etc. Best regards, MFGF.
Re: Isn't Viz a scorecarding tool?	You've got MM for scorecarding. Yet it's very interesting to hear about successful implementation stories bout it.
Re: Isn't Viz a scorecarding tool?	Visualizer = Dashboarding High level, highly visual, interactive presentation of data. Uses lots of colorful charts and navigation. Metrics Manager = Balanced Scorecard Logical groupings of metrics. Assigns accountability, tracks history, allows for collaboration and shows cause and effect. Tries to tie business process to results rather than overall outcome. CRN = Flexible reporting But the flexibility of the reporting allows you do do some things that replicate both scorecarding and dashboarding. I doubt they will even migrate Viz to series 8 because adding a few charts and mutidimensional datasources and you can do more than you could in Viz.
Isn't CRN a reporting (BI) tool rather than Scoredard or dashboard?	From what I've seen CRN has been used as a replacement for Impromptu.  I don't see how it can be called a scoredcarding or dashboard tool. Has anyone out there seen it used for these purposes?
Re: Isn't CRN a reporting (BI) tool rather than Scoredard or dashboard?	Blue, Youre a controversial one! What really stood out for me when I first saw the CRN demo was the composite reporting functionality. So from that point of view, I will not just call it a BI tool. Keep em coming!
Re: Isn't CRN a reporting (BI) tool rather than Scoredard or dashboard?	I think CRN is BI + scorecard/dashboard tool..... but don't take my word for it, COGNOS.com has categorised it as the latter
Re: Isn't CRN a reporting (BI) tool rather than Scoredard or dashboard?	Hi Blue, CRN can be used to create dashboard and scorecard like reports now in the current version.  It will however, from what I heard, have much more Viz like capability built into the Report Studio and have a separate studio for Scorecarding in Cognos 8.
Re: Isn't CRN a reporting (BI) tool rather than Scoredard or dashboard?	hi, with crn 1.1mr2 we coul'd not use PowerCubes as data source so crn is still an reporting tool. The underlaying technice allow to use it for buliding dashboards and balanced scorecards. have a look here: http://applications.apparo-network.com/html/applications.html Regards, Jens
Re: Isn't CRN a reporting (BI) tool rather than Scoredard or dashboard?	You can use it for both. It can be used for dashboarding in that you can display information from different datasources in the same report (which you could not do in previous products such as Impromptu). You also have a great deal of flexibilty in layout and can provide the information in various graphical formats as well as data listings. You cannot use OLAP data as a datasource in this version, and you can't structure metrics in the way you can in Metrics Manager (or at least, not without a lot of work), so it's probably not the only tool you would want to build an overall scorecarding solution, but it can certainly form part of one.
Where can I find some good themes to get ideas from?	Upfront is highly customisable.  Where can I find some interesting themes ot get inspired by?
Re: Where can I find some good themes to get ideas from?	Check out Hewitt's presentation form October 2004 Chicago User Group meeting available at this URL: http://www.brightstarpartners.com/CIUGChicago/October2004/ug0410.html If you need something like it, let me know. I've been known to take Upfront to its limits. I wish I could post what I've done for Telus here, but I am bound by an NDA.
Packages	I'm a newbie to COGNOS -  in ReportNet, is a Package similar to a Catalog?
Re: Packages	Packages contain the business information and is the definition of the underlying database(s). If you click on the package explorer you can see the structure. Business info/rules can be included into these packages that cannot normally be included into databases eg. the calculation of profit.
Re: Packages	That description sounds very much like an Impromptu catalog to me, at least in functionality.
Re: Packages	Yes, a package is equivalent to a catalog. It has a lot more flexibility, but does not do everything the same way as catalogs (not that that's a bad thing).
Repeaters	What's a repeater? I can't find anything on it.
Re: Repeaters	repeaters are tables that contain cell information that display data for individual query items. Only list reports can be converted into repeater reports. They're often used to create mailing labels. I can't think of anything else that it might be good for......
Re: Repeaters	business cards ... know anyone who needs business cards!!!
Re: Repeaters	You can also use repeater cells to control layout. For example, a list has a bunch of records where the fields are spread out across the page horizontally. You can use a repeater to spread the fields vertically down the page instead. Sometimes people like this sort of thing. ;-)
Drill through reports in Reportnet	I can't seem to get the drill through functionality to work. I created the parent report (I assume this is the source report) and then the child report (the target report).  Selected drill throughs, selected the target report, method=execute but it doesn't drill through. HELP!!!!!
Re: Drill through reports in Reportnet	Have you added a filter on the child report?
Re: Drill through reports in Reportnet	you also need to be certain you are set to drill on a correct column.  Make sure that it is the same one as your filter.  By default it will select the column you clicked on for drill through setup.  Verify that it is the right one.  For instance, you may want to drill on Item Name but the filter in the child is for Item Number.
Re: Drill through reports in Reportnet	Make sure the data types dont mismatch too  8) :D
Re: Drill through reports in Reportnet	Hi Merchant, is it working now?  Can you provide more details?  How many parameters are you passing to the child report?
Modeling in Framework Manager	Dear Cognoids, Due to Framework Manager's "interesting" makeup I find it difficult to model transactionally in it.  Has anyone had success doing it?  Everything I do, FM tries to force me to model dimensionally and then I run into bugs with stich queries for instance.  Also, how do you force FM not to try to join based on indexes and primary keys but instead listen to you and the join strategy you create?  It seems to keep the indexes and primary keys on file (I assume in one of it's XML files) and if I don't use them it creates a cross join. Any best practices would be most appreciated. Thanks,
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Hi cognosguru, Hmm - thorny topic this! :-) You're right about Framework Manager forcing you to model dimensionally.  It makes inherent assumptions about what is a Fact Table and what is a Dimension Table based on the cardinality of the relationships defined.  Within the context of a query, any Query Subject that is only at the many end of a relationship will be treated as a Fact Table, and any that are at the one end of a relationship will be treated as Dimension Tables.  Unless you model dimensionally, you could inadvertently end up with a query containing two "Fact Tables", which would result in a stitch query being generated (full outer join using first-non-null). Stitch queries are not bugs - they are the right thing to do when querying two fact tables which share common dimensions, possibly linking at different levels.  The art of modelling in Framework Manager is to rearrange the data into virtual fact and dimension query subjects where stitch queries would never be used within a package (ie all your measures are within the fact, and all your descriptive data is within conformed dimensions).  You will need to do this by merging query subjects together, then rather than leaving the merged query subjects as Model Query Subjects, convert them back to data query subjects with their own self-contained SQL.  For the dimensional query subjects, you will then need to set up dimensionality to specify the hierarchical levels and their attributes within the dimension. Best practice is to define an import view where you model things transactionally (exactly as in the underlying database).  Then create a "star schema" view in a different namespace where you merge query subjects from the import view into new Fact and Dimension data query subjects, and set up the relationships between these, then define dimensionality for the dimensions, then create star schema groupings.  Lastly create a business view in another namespace, where you select relevant parts from a star schema and put them into model query subjects as per the requirements of the end users.  Do not create relationships at this level - FM will use the relationships from the star schema level.  Publish your package(s) using query subjects from this view. If you don't do this, you will have problems, one of which you've already encountered in that the underlying key definitions are stored in model.xml when the import is done from the database.  You could edit this if you wanted to, but probably best not to! :-) Best regards, MF.
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Thanks MF, To clarify I know stich queries are not bugs, but we have found at least 2 bugs with them (on DB2 for certain). Why is it better to convert the model query subjects into data query subjects?  Thanks,
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Hi cognosguru, If you don't convert your Model Query Subjects into Data Query Subjects, ReportNet will resolve how to code the SQL for report queries by looking back at the underlying Data Query Subjects upon which the Model Query Subjects are based.  This means your queries will still use the SQL and relationships defined in your import view, and you're no better off. Best, MF.
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	MF, I thought that if I define the relationship at the Model Query subject level, ReportNet will use that join structure not the underlying one.  Am I mistaken? Thanks,
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Hi cognosguru, In simplistic terms, that's correct, but there's a bit more to it than that. If each Model query subject is built over one single Data query subject, and you specify the relationships between the Model query subjects, then what you are saying is true.  However, your Model query subjects will be based on multiple underlying Data query subjects.  In order to retrieve the data you have asked for in any Model query subject, ReportNet will have to run the queries in the underlying Data query subjects, using the relationships you have defined between those Data query subjects to figure out how to build the data set to return into the Model query subject.  Once this has been done, the relationships between the model query subjects are used in queries that span more than one model query subject.  Net result of all this is that the "merging" you thought you'd done to prevent unwanted stitch queries hasn't done so, as your query still ends up making use of the relationships in your Import View. If you convert the Model query subjects into Data query subjects, this changes things.  Since each merged query subject now contains a SQL query, there's no need to go back to the Import View to find out how to retrieve data, so only the relationships you define between these merged Data query subjects are used. Regards, MF.
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	MF, Thank you very much for your detailed responses.  I will try your suggestion.  Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find someone who really understands what is going on with Framework Manager thus I appreciate it all of your help.  Cognoise rocks!
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Thanks MFGF - the COGNOiSe team appreciates your insight and the assistance you provide us all (especially on ReportNet!) Thanks for the feedback too, cognosguru!
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	You're welcome!  Happy to be of help where I can. :-)
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Dear Cognosguru I had a similar problem with FM ignoring my joins and going in for cross joins when I did not use all indexes that made up the composite key in the underlying table. My workaround was to import database tables one at a time instead of importing all of them as one normally does. This approach worked fine for me. Note we do not have to do this all the time only in cases where underlying database tables use composite primary keys. HTH Regards NKT
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Thanks Freelancer, Another method that seemed to work was to choose the last option when importing tables (matching column names only). Can't wait till Cognos 8.
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	What do you think about the Cognos FM Best Practices document? http://support.cognos.com/supported/docs/en/reportnet/1.1/bestpractice_modeling_fm.pdf
Re: Modeling in Framework Manager	Hi Darek, I have read through it and it helps clarify some issues.  In my opinion, it does not however go into the real crux of it.  I was able to pick up a number of good things but it left me with more questions then answers.
Ordering of Newsboxes in Upfront ... and automation	I've come across an interesting issue with Upfront NewsBoxes and automation... to ensure that a newsbox is listed first, I have put a space in front of it's name ... eg " Prior Year" newsbox appears before "02-03" and "03-04"... the issue that I have come across is that I have noticed that some of my automated processes see this item as "//NewsIndex/History/Newsindex", rather than "//NewsIndex/History/ Prior Year" ... it seems that when a space is used as the first character in a newsbox name then it is recognised internally as "Newsindex" ... I suppose I could test for a space first and then work with the newsbox, but that's a bit ugly.... any thoughts on why this phenomenon exists would be much appreciated. cheers, DW
Re: Ordering of Newsboxes in Upfront ... and automation	If you used an underscore instead of a space how does that sort?
Re: Ordering of Newsboxes in Upfront ... and automation	thanks Blue ... underscores, dashes, dots ... all are fine ... just that damn space ...  ??? cheers, DW
Re: Ordering of Newsboxes in Upfront ... and automation	If content sorting is what you crave, there might be a better solution. I'd like to refer you to an article yours truly wrote ages ago and which is available at this URL: http://www.brightstarpartners.com/tech_corner.htm Have fun. I did.
Re: Ordering of Newsboxes in Upfront ... and automation	Thanks Darek, brilliant ... food for thought, thats for sure ... I'll have a look at this in a week or so and let you know how it goes. thanks again! cheers, DW
Cross Tab Reports in Cognos	I want to create a CrossTab report in Cognos ReportNet, however my data is Text instead of numbers as: Table#1 AcctID     QuestionData     AnswerData ------        ------------           ---------- 100006     Name                Keith 100006     Address1          51 West Road 100007     Name                Ray 100007     Address1          21 Grey Street I want CrossTab report like this from the above Table#1:                  Name             Address1 100006     Keith            51 West Road 100007     Ray              21 Grey Street When I use any of the Aggregate functions as Max or Min ( which works with SQL Server ), I get the following output                   Name             Address1 100006     #!Error            #!Error 100007     #!Error            #!Error Is there any way of generating the report as above ? Most of the examples in Cognos ReportNet Help says about Numerical Data, which is not the case here... THANKS A LOT 8)
Re: Cross Tab Reports in Cognos	I would create an Alias table ,and the following SQL. [code] select distinct T1.ID, T1.DESC as name , T2.DESC as address from `test23.tab` T1, `test23.tab` T2 where T1.ID = T2.ID   and T2.TYPE = 'Address1'   and T1.TYPE = 'Name' order by 1 [/code] Then the result is: [table] [tr][td]ID[/td][td]Name[/td][td]Address[/td][/tr] [tr][td]100006[/td][td]Keith[/td][td]51 West Road[/td][/tr] [tr][td]100007[/td][td]Ray[/td][td]21 Grey Street[/td][/tr] [/table] It's not exactly a cross-tab, but the output is what you are looking for.
Re: Cross Tab Reports in Cognos	1 create a query 2 create a tab. model (named 'all') 3 within that tab. model you place two tab. models (named 'name' and 'address') 4 in the left (of the two) add: acctid, questiondata (rename to 'questionname') and answerdata (rename to 'answername') 5 in the left (of the two) add a filter questiondata=name 6 in the right (of the two) add: acctid, questiondata (rename to 'questionaddress') and answerdata (rename to 'answeraddress') 7 in the right (of the two) add a filter questiondata=address1 8 in the first tab. model ('all') get the acctid, questionname and answername from the tab. model 'name' and add questionaddress and answeraddress from the tab. model 'address' 9 add a filter to 'all' by dragging the acctid from step 8 to the filtersection and equal it to the acctid fom address. it should look like this [acctid]=[address].[acctid] 10 in the cube items add acctid as a dimension and the other fields as measures. 11 create a list and assign it to your query. 12 Drag from query items the item 'acctid' to the list and after that, place the two other fields (answername & answeraddress) from the query items on the list. 14 now edit the listheaders to see the desired header names (for acctid you can click the text-property and leave it blank and press ok. Good luck!
Plugins?	Hi there, Are there any plugins or extentions available to ReportNet? I'm looking for additional design features for the Report Studio, in particular, an ability to position columns in a list object across a page (like colspan in html tables)?
Re: Plugins?	You could fake the desired functionality provided that you'll use absolute object sizes.
Benchmark tests on Cognos Powerplay	Hi All,         I am new to this group. We are evaluating features of OLAP tools to suggest our client which one is best suitable. In this process I tryed a lot to get information on benchmark tests and their results that were done on [b]Cognos Powerplay7.3[/b].But I didn't get any information.So please let me know if anyone has any information on this. thank you, with regards, s.ramesh
Re: Benchmark tests on Cognos Powerplay	Powerplay is an absolutely wonderful tool. According to the statistics, the only one competitor is Informatica, though I don't know about Imformatica but Powerplay is absolutely wonderful in terms of functionality, ease of use, the power it has. It's not like SAP BW which in my opinion is not even worth calling BI tool.
Re: Benchmark tests on Cognos Powerplay	The are a couple of web sites dedicated to BI and OLAP inparticular.  Maybe you can find benchmarks there. www.OLAPreport.com www.datawarehouse.com www.intelligententerprise.com software review sites www.zdnet.com www.cnet.com research companies www.techdata.com www.gartner.com etc. and don't forget search sites like google and ask.
Cube & Fact table size	PP, being a MOLAP and file-storage tool, suffers from fact data size increase. Therefore: 1 what was your cube\fact table maximum? 2 query response time (complex Advanced Subsets i.e.) 3 did cube groups help you with this issue? Mine, for start: 1 200 Mb \ 10 GB 2 30 sec 3 Nope, that was week's data
Re: Cube & Fact table size	I doesn't matter how big you cube.. it depends on the number of dimension and measurs.. if number of dimension increases then the query response time will increate and please check the optimization tips from Cognos PDFs...
Re: Cube & Fact table size	Surely it's so. But there surely is a correlation between table size & quantity of dimensions :))). And usually client's ask: "We've 0,5 Pb datawarehouse, what your cubes maximum?" Yet I can bring dimension chart as well. Is it interesting?
Re: Cube & Fact table size	I've been successfully running cubes in excess of 2.5GB, even before COGNOS officialy supported such monster. There are many factors that will decide how big your cubes is: 1. # of dimensions 2. # of measures and their storage type 3. # of partitions (auto or manual) Having the cube time-partitioned helps performance as well, but there are limitations on what a time-partitioned cube can contain (like only one real time dimension, but you know, there are fake ones, too). Reponse times are usually within 3-30 seconds range, depending on query complexity, if running on an Intel platform. Any RISC hardware would be a waste of time, regardless how good the industry think it is.
Re: Cube & Fact table size	Additional comments: 1. There is a direct correlation between a cube size and its run-time performance. 5MB cube will perform much faster than a 5GB. 2. There is no physical limit on how big a cube can be. In my experience I used cubes as large as 10GB with decent performance. [To other moderators: If you think the next paragraph is of self-marketing nature, please remove] I'd like to invite everyone around Chicago Land interested in more details, to a presentation on this very subject during Performance 2005 on Oct 14th.
Re: Cube & Fact table size	Darek, do you, be any chance, know anything about PP's internal processing algorithm? I still hope on having time someday to perform rather a dull, but very informative test of loading the same table with different sorting. Results should vary, if any optimization techniques are used :) Just a remark: rather fast molap engines are being devised in science(exp QC,DWARF), but it seems not to have any issue with Cognos. Pity.
Re: Cube & Fact table size	Unfortunatelly, I don't. But that DWARF thing looks promising.
Re: Cube & Fact table size	Yet a lot o work to do. No incremental updates, no multi-measuring. See Quotient Trees & Quotient Cubes -- brilliant idea inside.
view/convert .imr files?	I have been sent some .imr files.  I do not have impromptu or reportnet, but I understand that that is the application to open them from.  Does anyone know of a tool that I can use to view or convert these files? ??? Thanks!
Re: view/convert .imr files?	Hi misscrf, You will need a copy of Impromptu to be able to open .imr files.  Also, unless they are snapshot reports which contain the data as well as the report definitions, I'd hope you also have more than just .imr files too - you'd normally need either some hotfiles (.ims) or a catalog (.cat) and relevant instructions to connect it to it's database. If you can get a copy of Impromptu (and if your reports are snapshots, or if you have a catalog, or if you have the hotfiles), you will be able to open the reports and save them in another format such as pdf, csv,excel,html etc. Best regards, MF.
Re: view/convert .imr files?	You'll also need the correct version of Impromptu to read the IMR files.  E.g. 7.0 won't read 7.1. Use a text editor like TextPad (www.textpad.com) to inspect the contents of the file.  IMR files are essentialliy semi-compiled instructions that tell the Impromptu report engine what to do.  As a poster has already said, sometimes an IMR file may also contacin data that the developer has saved with these instructions.  A pure text editor, unlike MS Word and MS Wordpad, will allow you to see the contents of the file without altering it.  In this way you should be able to see the version number near the start of the file. Good luck.
Power2000	I actually used this tool for a Y2K project.  It was kind of cool.  Is it still actually for sale?  :o Mark Stewart Consultant Windsor, Ontario
Re: Power2000	Was Power2000 a patch/upgrade for the then PowerHouse? Or did P2k supersede it? But to answer your question, it appears to be an obselete product : http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/obsolete_products.html nichS
Re: Power2000	Power2000 was a tool written in Delphi which assisted customers with PowerHouse applications to find all potential problems which may arise from the new millenium (remember all the scare stories in the late 20th century about disasters as a result of the millennium bug?) It was essentially a global edit and change facility which could be programmed to find any syntax which may need to be changed because of date problems. It also came with a set of Impromptu reports. However, as you know, it is no longer supported. Also, it was completely separate from PowerHouse and only ran on Windows. However, it could be programmed to find any problem areas, not just problems relating to the millennium.
Re: Power2000	Nice short description. While Power2000 is from Cognos' point of view "obsolete" and no longer sold it may be that there is a second hand market for it.  It really requires no support, is self-contained, and does a great job at making complex (as well as simple) code to changes to many source files at once. I don't remember exactly how many copies were sold but ther must be quite a number of companies out there with a copy gathering dust on a shelf.  Where not sell or trade it online? Also if we lobby Cognos enough it might see the light and make the tool available on demand.
[Solved] Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	Has anyone being able to effectively use tooltips in the reportnet reports? Here is the scenario. I would like to display to our user metadata information via tooltips about our reports and data. However this displayed metadata information needs to be centralized for ease control. When user passed cursor over a column name for instance, then information about the column would be displayed.  Has anyone attempted anything like and if so how did you manage it,  since based on best practises tooltips can only be imbedded by reporting authors and not Metadata Admins who does not write the reports
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	If you add values in the "Screen Tip" property in Framework Manager, this will be displayed in Report Studio when you mouse over the model item. Were you referring to tool tips in Report Studio or in finished reports?
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	Hi All, i have another scenario. I have two tables, one table contains column name, description of  column, another one is table related to first one(that is all the column name eg. prod_name,prod_cate,prod_price etc). i want to display column description(for eg. for prod_name, it has to display "product name") as tool tip in report studio whenever mouse move on particular column. how can i achieve this? thanks in advance. vsudaya
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	Have you tried it using javascript.. That's not gonna be very difficult.
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	Yep, Can be done using Java scripts.... we used it in the past. This week I'm abroad but will search for it in the weekend... Regards, vincent
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	Is it that what you are looking for? [img][/img] Cu Jolly
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	This is exactly what is describe in a [url=http://support.cognos.com/supported/supportlink/14n4/techreview10.xml]SupportLink Article.[/url]
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	[quote author=jolly link=topic=29.msg2112#msg2112 date=1129637291] Is it that what you are looking for? [img][/img] Cu Jolly [/quote] Yes, exactly what i am looking for?, how can i do that? any articles? thanks in advance vsu
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	Hi vsudaya, look at the link posted from Draoued. This is an Article from Cognos.  I have attached a simple List Report which solved your Problem. Look at the two HTML-Items. Be sure you hav the GO SALES AND RETAILERS Package. CU Jolly
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	hi, thanks for reply.  i dont have access(account) to cognos support forums so that i can get the article. Can i have the description of that article so that i can get more idea on that. thanks in advance vsudaya
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	if you are using a Cognos application and paying the yearly fee , you must have an access. I would suggest that you contact your reseller and ask for an access. There is much more than this case describe in SupportLink Magazine, and you ll get at the same time access to Cognos Knowlegde database , which is also a good source of information.
Re: Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	Vsud: Read the board rules (I've just updated them)
Re: [Solved] Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	I have tried using the supportlink technique, but the html doesn't pick up the values from the query, just prints a small dash in the field. Can someone help? Thanks
Re: [Solved] Using tooltips in ReportNet Reports	[quote author=jeffnichuk link=topic=29.msg2875#msg2875 date=1131972171] I have tried using the supportlink technique, but the html doesn't pick up the values from the query, just prints a small dash in the field. Can someone help? Thanks [/quote] Are you using the HTML item in a list or somewhere else on the page?  It would have to be in an area associated with a query. Are you using the fully qualified item name ([querysubject].[itemname]) or just the item's name as shown in the query? Regards, Mike
Configuring ReportNet	Hi Guys, I never worked on Cognos ReportNet before, help me out in configuring the ReportNet into WebSphere AppServer.
Re: Configuring ReportNet	I have configured ReportNet with BEA Weblogic 8.1 SP4 and let me tell you this was one of the most difficult tasks I ever carried out support from Cognos consultants not withstanding. Essentially you create a p2pd.war file which is the jar file of a web application and you then deploy it the Websphere server. One hard earned lesson: Do not ever install ReportNet in a folder path that has names with spaces in it for e.g. 'Program Files'. BEA Weblogic did not recognize the existence of Cognos CRN  under such circumstances. For specific info. on the steps for integration you will need to refer to www.cognos.com Regards NKT
Re: Configuring ReportNet	Hi, Here is my situation: I've got to have ReportNet Server on one node and Content Manager on another node. First i configured the ReportNet server node, generated the war file and deployed the war file into WebSphere. Later on configured the Content Manager node, generated the war file and deployed into WebSphere. But i dont see any tables being created in the database. Can you please send me the exact procedure to do this. I appreciate your help. Thanks, vinod
Re: Configuring ReportNet	Hmm! Your configuration is a bit different from mine. Is it possible for you to host the content manager servlet on the same computer as the ReportNet server. The actual content store can be put on any box. A few points to note. 1) you only need to generate one .war file called P2PD.war. You should not deploy two .war files to the J2EE server 2) Make sure you deploy the .war file to the managed server and not the admin server 3) Tables in the content store get created after you re start the managed server and not when you simply deploy. 4) The procedure I follow is applicable to BEA Weblogic and may not be suited to IBM Websphere. Let me know if you still need it. Can I attach files to this post Regards NKT
Re: Configuring ReportNet	Thanks for your prompt reply. 1. No, i can't put the Content Manager in the same node as that of Report Server node as the design is so. So, i just need to deploy only one jar file, the one generated from ReportServer node. 2.Could you send me the docs, which u used for whole process. I appreciate you help. Thanks, vinod
Re: Configuring ReportNet	Hi Vinod Unfortunately my attachment exceeds the size limit of 128 KB NKT
Re: Configuring ReportNet	Here is my mail ID: *email address removed* you can mail me to this ID. Thanks, vinod *sorry guys - email addresses are not a good idea because of the spam factor. We've already had a few nasty bots go through our site (and it's only been Live for 2 weeks!). I'll bump up the attachment size limit however feel free to email me with the attachment and I will pass it on. Cheers Jon COGNOiSe administrator [email]email@cognoise.com[/email]
Re: Configuring ReportNet	I've upped the attachment limit to 5Mb - let me know if you have any probs.
Re: Configuring ReportNet	We have a people friendly administrator  ;D The new limit is more than enough. Here comes the attachment. Regards NKT
Re: Configuring ReportNet	Hi, I configued the Cognos ReportNet, build the war file and deployed it into webSphere. When I stop and start the AppServer,  I found follwoing errors under AppServer logs: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/cognos/accman/jcam/crypto/misc/JNISystemProperties [8/3/05 15:13:31:591 CDT] 70541535 ServletInstan E SRVE0100E: Did not realize  init() exception thrown by servlet dispatch: javax.servlet.ServletException: com/cognos/accman/jcam/crypto/misc/JNISystemProperties at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.StrictServletInstance.doInit(StrictServletInstance.java:99) And I don't find any tables created in the Content store. Could you figure out what e