Tag Archive for: Multidimensional

,

Ironside Tech Tip: Leveraging Time and Aggregate Functions in Dimensional Reporting to Create Low Maintenance Cognos Reports

/by

Over the years I have successfully used the ancestor(), parallelPeriods(), periodToDate(), aggregate(), and set() dimensional functions to develop robust and durable dimensional reporting solutions in IBM Cognos BI.

I had the opportunity to go to lunch the other day with one of my clients from a few years ago and they told me that the profit and loss reports that I wrote for them were still in use. These reports used no year or month members (directly) and required little if any maintenance over the last two years, despite daily refreshes of the source PowerCube. Read more

Dynamic Dashboards: Filtering and Drill-Down within IBM Cognos Portlets

/by

A request we often get is to build more dynamic dashboards and reports. This can be accomplished by a combination of Report Studio prompt reports, portlets, drill-up/drill-down and filtering. The key to this interactivity is communication between IBM Cognos portlets and channels. Utilizing channels allows us to create dynamic filtering and drilling capability. This article will explain the basics of using portlets and channels and provide a sample of how to create a dynamic dashboard. Read more