Writing reports: Developers ...Advanced Report Builder / Cognos Info links

smallspark2 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:41:57 GMT

I'm a newbie to writing/utilizing Cognos to write reports in ARB and wanted to share some info that's helping. It took me awhile to find and look at the info out there to see what's worthwhile to refer to. Or at least what I think is worthwhile, at this stage. Just fyi - I've never written or used/applied a database languages before. I've only used actionscript, html, css and javascript.

Some Basics to know:

ARB is based on the Cognos language - currently Cognos version 8.2 ARB seems to be based on the Cognos report writer application, if that helps you know which cognos to research. :)

Cognos is based on SQL language. Cognos and SQL are Database languages.

The basic difference between Cognos and SQL is that Cognos can handle many queries at once while SQL can handle only one.

I don't know how much ARB extends or limits Cognos or SQL syntax or capabilities.

It seems like you can use HTML, Rich Media and perhaps javascript in the ARB reports. HTML and Rich Media for sure. Javascript I'm not positive. If you look around in ARB you'll see you can do this but if you've never used this, you may not have gotten to it yet or know there are opportunities to use more than once language here.

(Question: I'm sure there are some other differences but I haven't gotten to that yet. I'm only just trying to figure out ARB vs. Cognos vs. SQL syntax. (Why? Short certificate SQL classes I can find - Cognos, not so much without jumping into full blown training) Also, there is a Data Manager scripting language in the Cognos info - does that relate to ARB in any way?)

Meaty info - the GOOD Stuff:

Info on IBM site:

For now, use the link below however, I found out today that ARB is Cognos version 8.2 (and very similar to Report Writer) and the IBM link below is to version 8.4. I’m not up to googling to find earlier 8.2 documentation versions quite yet. (IBM site is a giant snarl.)

When you go to the below link, you'll see an outline to your left.

I think a basic place to start (and see the similarities with ARB) is Author and Create> Report Studio Professional Authoring User Guide 8.4.0

For more coding detail, which is what I want, then go to the Administer and Deploy section> Cognos SQL 8.4

It looks like Model and Design Section> Framework Manager also has potential information. Nothing else really jumped out at me. How about you?

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/c8bi/v8r4m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.swg.im.cognos.ug_cr_pps.8.4.0.doc/ug_cr_pps_id497AnalysisStudio.html

This is a nice pdf download on dimensional functions (version 8 BI) :

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/page82.html

This is a nice pdf download on Report Bursting (version 8.3)

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/page241.html

User Group:
http://businessintelligence.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/cognos8-l/

Cognos References on College site (protected- no downloads)

I used this mostly for titles/documents of available/ vetted Cognos related info (and other potential references)

Note: I will connect to my old college and see if they have something similar - check with your alma mater too. :)

http://www.stthomas.edu/IRT/support/enterprise/cognosreportingtool.html

Happy 4th!

Dana

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Writing reports: Developers ...Advanced Report Builder / Cognos Info links