Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Our assumption for this example is that the report users would like to analyze the time it
takes to close orders and group them into special categories that were not defined at the time the
reporting database was built. They would like to classify the orders into three different categories
(less than 10 days to close, 10 to 20 days to close, and more than 20 days to close). In addition,
they would like to see whether there is a difference between various retailer types to look for
trends that need to be addressed by the sales and distribution teams.
Finally, we would like to take this example further by enhancing the design with multipage
navigation.
The final result we are trying to achieve should look similar to Figure 5.11.
Figure 5.11
Completed integration of multiple queries into a complex report example
The trick to solving this problem will be to create a union of three queries at the same time. Each
query will process the same data set from the database; however, the logic in each query will cat-
egorize the records differently.
One of the little-known design capabilities of query unions in IBM Cognos Report Studio is
that you can actually union as many queries as you need at one time. Usually, new developers will
think that they can union only two queries at the time because when they drag a union object into
the query design, they see only two placeholders for the queries. This leads them to think that they
work with only two query joins at a time and that a lot of unions have to be performed, which can
be tedious.
