Tag Archives: report studio

January 10, 2014

Using Prompt API for IBM Cognos BI Report Studio

By Greeny Dangerous
Prompt API for IBM Cognos BI

Prompt API for IBM Cognos BI

Default values for report prompts? It doesn’t sound very difficult does it? Well as far as the default values are static you can define them easily with your report properties but in the real business world there’s no such thing as static. Change is just around the corner and so we need to have more dynamic reporting solutions. Making dynamic default values for report prompts is something that should be a out-of-the-box-feature (as it is in Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services for example) but with IBM Cognos BI Report Studio it has been about making some JavaScript/HTML/DOM hacks. Now they’ve released Prompt API for IBM Cognos BI to tackle down this issue. Well, it’s still Javascript but at least there is a documented API how to use it. Let’s give it a shot.

In my simple example I’ve created a report with two prompts and one HTML Item. The first “kkprompt”-prompt fetches the default value that is going to be selected in the another prompt. You can later on hide the first prompt box because it doesn’t need any user interaction. Now, to get the “defaultselprompt” prompt working with dynamic default value we need to add the following code inside the HTML Item.

prompt_api_code

And that’s pretty much it! I’m still amazed that this kind of feature is behind some javascript code and not available in the prompt box properties but hey, maybe in the next major release?

-GD

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September 22, 2012

TM1 dimension hierarchy levels not showing up in Cognos BI Reporting Studio

By Greeny Dangerous

Being still a “TM1-freshman” I find myself facing some mysterious problems specially when it comes to the integration part of TM1 and Cognos BI. Recently we made updates to customer’s production environment. We copied new dimension and cube files and the associated {-prefixed control cube files from test environment. Cubes were also used by many reports in Cognos BI and everything else seemed fine but the hierarchy levels were missing:

Dimension levels not showing up in Report Studio

Normally updating the reporting package from Framework Manager does all the tricks but this time it wasn’t enough. It’s a relief to have a community like TM1 Forum where hundreds of professionals gather up and offer their help. A quick search there and I found out that there is a special control cube called {HierarchyProperties and from there you can choose whether to publish the dimensions with level information or not:

{HierarchyProperties cube

So I thought adding the level names there and once again refreshing the reporting package I’ll do the trick but there were still no levels showing up. Going through more threads I discovered that there is also a special TI function called RefreshMDXHierarchy() that one should execute after making changes in the control cube. Finally that missing function call did the trick and hierarchy levels appeared in Report Studio! One more thing to remember in the future …

Edit 19.9.2013: Make sure you ran first RefreshMDXHierarchy(‘ ‘) and then again RefreshMDXHierarchy(‘<your_dimension_name’)

Edit 18.11.2013: IBM released a new technote regarding this same matter. According to it one must ensure also the following things:

  • Determine whether CQM or DQM (Compatable Query Mode or Dynamic Query Mode) is being used in BI.
  • If using CQM, navigate to CognosInstallDIR\data\cqe\RTModels and remove everything within it (folders and files) so that there is an empty RTModels folder.
  • If using DQM, then navigate to CognosInstallDIR\data\mfw4j\PMCs and remove everything within it (folders and files) so there is an empty PMCs folder.

NOTE that you will need to stop BI to perform the actions above.
Alternatively, try republishing the package via FM.

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