Database Reference
In-Depth Information
COGNOS 8 NOTE
The
Automatic Summary
option is called
Aggregate
.
2.
From the
Run
menu, select
Run Report - HTML
to view the report. The results should
resemble Figure 1.18.
Figure 1.18
Final crosstab view
Notice how the Total line for the percentage calculations is also correct using this alter-
native suggested step.
3.
Close the
IBM Cognos Viewer
window to return to IBM Cognos Report Studio.
Sometimes the trick is just to find the correct property or a button. With the ever-changing
list of features or options that are added to the new releases of IBM Cognos BI, you will keep dis-
covering easier and better ways to solve the same report issues. Over time, you will notice that
there are several ways to do the same thing, all correct, and it will come down to personal prefer-
ence when you need to decide which approach to take.
In this chapter, we wanted to focus on some practical tips and hints to help report authors get
some new ideas for their report requirement solutions that simplify the presentation of the
reports.
In class, we cover most of the commonly used IBM Cognos Report Studio object proper-
ties; however, it takes some time and report-building experience to find out what the rest of the
properties are useful for.
The first example builds on the exceptional highlighting techniques we cover in the IBM
Cognos Report Studio Fundamentals and Advanced classes. For example, the classes teach the
students how to highlight values in individual cells or the whole rows of data based on some kind
of static or user-defined thresholds. Our example takes exceptional highlighting to the next level
by combining the highlighting techniques with some complex report expression building to
achieve the desired results.
