Cognos Report Development

Best Practices

Enterprise Reporting
Services
Report Development Steps
Step 1: Become Familiar with the ODS data for the report
Use the ODS Metadata Business Concept Diagrams to become
familiar with the joins (relationships), keys, hub views, and the
various reporting views available for your report .
http://www.temple.edu/ers/metadata

Step 2: Locate the data items needed in a Cognos package
Use the ERS developed MS Excel spreadsheet to locate the
required packages, subjects, and query items/fields.
List of ODS packages, query subjects, and query items/fields

Step 3: Login to Cognos Connection and begin writing the
report. (Make sure your IE settings are correct.)
Step 1: Become Familiar with the ODS data for the report

Use the ODS Metadata Business Concept Diagrams to become
familiar with the joins (relationships), keys, hub views, and the
various reporting views available for your report .

http://www.temple.edu/ers/metadata

See the document How to Find a Banner Field in the ODS on
the ERS/Report Studio Web page.


Step 2: Locate the data items needed in a Cognos package.
Use the ERS developed MS Excel spreadsheet to locate the required
packages, subjects, and query items/fields.
List of ODS packages, query subjects, and query items/fields
Step 3: Login to Cognos Connection and begin writing the report
Report Development Tips and Tricks
Grab as many query items as you can from the hub
view.
Use as many recommended search columns as
possible for report columns, filters, and sorts. *
Use as few queries and query subjects as possible for
better performance.
Use hard coded prompts when possible versus
query sources, including List of Values (LOV).
* (Fields are not included in the data request if they are not used in the report display, sort, or filter. That is, a
field included in a report query that is not used in the display, sort, or filter will not be included in the SQL
that is sent to Oracle.)
Grab as many query items as you can from the hub query subject/view.
Use as many recommended search columns as possible for report columns,
filters, and sorts.
Use as many recommended search columns as possible for report columns,
filters, and sorts.

Example:
[Course Catalog].[Course Catalog].[COURSE_IDENTIFICATION]
[Course Catalog].[Course Catalog].[SUBJECT]
[Course Catalog].[Course Catalog].[COURSE_NUMBER]
[Course Catalog].[Course Catalog].[ACADEMIC_YEAR]
[Course Catalog].[Course Catalog].[ACADEMIC_PERIOD]
[Course Catalog].[Course Attribute].[COURSE_ATTRIBUTE]
[Course Catalog].[Course Attribute].[COURSE_ATTRIBUTE_DESC]
[Course Catalog].[Course Coreq].[COURSE_TYPE]
[Course Catalog].[Course Coreq].[COURSE_TYPE_DESC]

Takes 8 seconds to run without the following filter

[Course Catalog].[Course Catalog].[ACADEMIC_PERIOD] is not null

Include the filter and it takes 1 second. Academic Period is a recommended
search column for the Course Catalog query subject.

Use as few queries and query subjects as possible for better performance.
Use hard coded prompts when possible versus query sources,
including List of Values (LOV).
LOV is useful when there are a lot of possible values. However, the user
can then select a valid value that results in no data being returned. For
example, Academic Period LOV includes values like 202036.
Report Development Tips and Tricks
When building report filters, use fully qualified
query items.
Example:
[Admission Application].[Admissions Application].[COMPLETE_IND] = ?complete?
Instead of
[COMPLETE_IND] = ?complete?

Use as many filters as possible to limit the
amount of data requested from the ODS.
Report Development Tips and Tricks
Select as many query items as you can from
the same query subject. Minimize the
number of query subjects the report uses.

Build the report one query subject at a time to
monitor when performance issues occur. Use
the tabular view to test your query
performance.
Report Development Tips and Tricks
Use the view tabular data feature in Report
Studio to help troubleshoot and see what data
is being retrieved by your query(s).
Use the row number insertable object in
Report Studio to provide row counts for
troubleshooting purposes.
Use comments (in an HTML object).

Use the view tabular data feature in Report Studio to help troubleshoot and see
what data is being retrieved by your query(s).
Use the view tabular data feature in Report Studio to help troubleshoot and see
what data is being retrieved by your query(s).
Use the row number insertable object in Report Studio to provide row counts
for troubleshooting purposes.
Use the row number insertable object in Report Studio to provide row counts
for troubleshooting purposes.
Use an HTML object to record notes and comments about the report. Make
sure that the text is commented.
Aggregation (Auto Summarize and Group)


When using the GUI to get the possible values for a field, Cognos issues a select
distinct which scans the entire table and this scan may take a very long time to get all
of the unique values.