Consulting Available

I suggest you to take the official Cognos training classes - or at least read the book...

With that said... if you need some real-world advice I am able to help.

Please contact me via this blog!

Season's Greetings

Hi

as you can see there was no activity on my side on this blog in 2010.
Despite that (or because of that :-) ) you've been commenting and visiting the pages. Thanks!
I wish you all happy holidays.

thanks for keeping this blog going!

Hi folks!

As you may have noticed, I haven't been posting actively for quite a while now.
From time to time I see people asking questions in comments and responding to each other.
I just want to thank you for keeping this blog active.

The good thing is that since I stopped posting new articles the number of page views are climbing ;-)

ps. Can you spot the Xmas break?

Jasper Reports

It's somewhat off-topic but recently I've been working with Jasper Reports which free and open-source and its capabilities blow my mind.
I can see why Cognos is easier to use in some cases... on the other hand you need to look at the price-benefit ratio too!
Is there anyone into open-source BI?

Cognos Express

I just read about Cognos entering the small-to-medium size business marketplace with a new product (new packaging?) called Cognos Express.
Have you played with it?
What do you think?
Please share your thoughts here...

I'm Back Doing Cognos Again

Hi all!

after a 6 month pause I'm back working with Cognos again.

Please expect some posts on how to build a dashboard and how to solve incremental cube building with Transformer.

Sic.

Parameter Maps on 8.3

I've been using parameter maps to implement data level security on Cognos 8.3
After some Cognos patches were installed my reports stopped to work.
It took me quite a while to trace the problem back to my use of parameter maps.
(The error messages did not help - business as usual.)
The parameter map I'm using is based on a SQL query. I think this is where Cognos got mixed up...
My queries are dimensional queries working off PowerCubes.
I have a feeling this did not mix well with the SQL in the parameter map.

I found a way to fix it... cannot really explain why it works but it did... so I'm sharing it here, maybe it can help someone.

I changed the value of the "Use for Parameter Info" proprty of the queries.
On the prompt page I set it to "Yes" and on the report I set it to "No"
This fixed the problem.

If anyone has related experience please share it in comments!