It’s more a list of demands for Cognos We need allocation cubes with an elist. There is no other way round the idea of dynamic Contributor applications. Dynamic as Analyst ones — by changing allocations in cube, you change data flow. Ain’t that analytic? What if we use footage as driver for lease costs? Or, [...]
Widely awaiten (by me ) Analyst refactoring did not happen. The problem of having a non-scalable yet very comfortable tool for creating calculation models and analyzing was solved not by enhancing the tool. It was solved by marketing, not R&D. Now Analyst is a “developer tool” and all budgeting process should go through a list [...]
@AddLocalPreselection macro allows you to “slice” all cubes in macro on dlist selection. You can choose one month and all commands in macro will be applied only to this month slices. By setting up an input variable for this macro, you make choice dynamic. Macro starts, you choose month and them all commands are applied [...]
I suggest using following directory structure for every project: Project Name\ Backup\ — directory for backups Analyst\ — models archived, with timestamping Databases\ — all Contributor applications dbs + pad,common Databases\ — it’s sometimes good to store db’s in the same place Documentation\ — model related documents Access Tables\ — whether you are using some [...]
It’s rather convenient to mark calculation-specific elements, which should be hidden from end-user, by placing some sign in front of dlist item name (for example ‘#’). Then in Contributor you can create saved selection “Auxiliary” with Filter “# *” to include all such elements. After that, create an Access-Table with “Auxiliary” Hidden, and there you [...]
3 main keyboard buttons in Cognos EP to remember by heart: Ctrl — map dlists/elements in links F7 — show formula in cell. “How is data calculated?” F9 — drilldown cell. “From where comes this data?”
Things to be set for adding job servers to cluster: EP Service runs under Local System Admin User on every computer (names and passwords are the same on every service).Domain users can be used as well, but some sophisticated problems can arise. COM+ Planning Object runs under the same Local System Admin identity Database connection [...]
If you are using Contributor-Analyst links I recommend using a such scheme: Create 3 libraries for each Contributor application: 1) skl — for skeleton library, containing only Contributor (Update-packed) links 2) exp — for exporting data from Contributor to Analyst, containing all cubes for export. Elist is substituted to a “real” one. 3) imp — [...]
Elist should always be as high as possible in dimension order. Dimension rules apply to it as to subtotal dlist. Interesting effects can be reached by placing complex calculations after elist — they’ll work only on review level.
If you need loops in ep, iterative calculations — remember about Test(@Restart) macro. It check a cube slice for non-zero elements, and restarts macro execution if any is found. @Restart is an undocumented attribute of Test macro, usually used with SliceUpdate.