Cognos 8.

4 Upgrade

Business Intelligence

Why Cognos 8.4

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Increased Performance on Database due to optimized SQL and more filters passed in native SQL Less chance of killing the BIBus core process Firefox 3 support for Cognos Connection, Report View, and Query Studio Internet Explorer 7 is now supported for all products and studios Better Administration and Security

Microcharts and Excel 2007

Excel 2007 now supported, smaller files and ECMA supported Microcharts added to crosstab and list reports

Packages
Packages can now be moved into folders

Capabilities can now be defined at the package level

Express Authoring

A simplified Report Studio view that uses dimensionally modeled packages only. Designed for Financial Analysts.

Query Studio Filter Column

Query Studio users can now filter a column without adding it to the report.

Data Lineage

Data Lineage can be displayed in Report Studio from the selectable objects, and also in a report against a data item. It shows where a data item came from and any calculation done on that item.

Cognos 8.4 Behavior Changes

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Search prompts will now prompt to continue to search if the result set is large. Null values will now be used if selected. Divided values will now show 3 digits after the decimal except for currencies which will use the same number as the numerator. Divided values will use the same format as the numerator if the denominator is a query constant, number, or percentage. Else the format result will be a number. Rounding values will result in as many decimal places as the rounding precision. PDFs can now be paginated horizontally as well as vertically. Using custom formatting and leaving the replace null value box empty results in nulls now being shown instead of 0 values for nulls. Previous versions appeared to be ignoring this format and now it is being used correctly in 8.4.

Cognos 8.4 Splash Screen

Cognos 8.4 Studio Launch

The studio icons are now in a launch list, instead of spread across the top as icons. This list will still only show studios the user has the capabilities to access.

Excel Header

In Excel 2002 worksheets, headers can now be broken across multiple rows. In the Excel 2007 format below, the behavior stays the same and headers stay on the assigned row.

Currency Decimal set as Comma

The default for Currency Decimal Separator is , when not defined. Need to change the value to period where it is used.

Nulls in Prompts

Nulls are now an acceptable item in picklist prompts. If selected, it will return values with null. To remove this behavior add a null filter to the prompt query.

Singleton Usage
In this example there is a single data item displayed in a header, Open/Close. To do this, the report designer had to insert a table and then a list frame with a single data item in the list.

Singleton Usage cont.

Instead, use the new singleton object which is a single data item element.

Dont Print Class

The Dont Print class behavior has changed. It tells the object to not print or show in PDF or Excel formats. However it still shows in HTML outputs.

Dont Print Class Solution

There are a couple solutions to this if you dont want the object to show in HTML. One of the options is below, change the box type of the object to None.

JavaScript
JavaScript code can break during version upgrades and is not a recommended method.

In this example, the DESCRSHORT needs to be changed to Business Unit.

The above JavaScript is used currently to do this change.

JavaScript Fix

Changed the query to force the new name to be in the result set. This name is now used in the drop down list and no need for JavaScript.

Rigorous Datatype Checking

In 8.4, datatypes are now more rigorously checked. In the above example, count is a numerical value and hence does not equal a character as represented by the =

Rigorous Datatype Fix

In this case, you would replace the = with the is null statement. Even better for this job though would be to use the coalesce function to replace Nulls with 0.

Drill Through Page 8.2

Drill Through Page 8.4

The new page shows all three drill through entries, even though the label on one of the entries is still hidden and hence was not displayed in 8.2.

The new drill through link page shows more detail and has a debug option now to display the passed source values to the target report.

Upgrade Plan

Framework Manager

When running Framework Manager 8.2 and 8.4 concurrently, be sure to install 8.4 into a separate directory, here it is installed in c84.

Framework Object Dependencies

One of the new features in Framework Manager 8.4 is the Object dependency tool to show you any dependencies before you make a change to the model.

Further Resources
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Business Intelligence Solutions Website

http://www.it.northwestern.edu/about/departments/bi/index.html

NUBI Listserv email

listserv@listserv.it.northwestern.edu

IBM Cognos Support Site

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/products/cognos-8-businessintelligence/support/

IT Toolbox Cognos Community

http://businessintelligence.ittoolbox.com/topics/pbs/cognos/

Reference Manuals
Report Studio Professional Authoring User Guide: http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/8.4.0/ug_cr_rptstd.pdf Framework Manager User Guide: http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/8.4.0/ug_fm.pdf Transformer User Guide : http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/8.4.0/ug_cogtr.pdf Report Studio Express Authoring User Guide: http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/8.4.0/ug_rptstd_fin.pdf