Cognos is annoying
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I guess it's not really Cognos that's annoying, but more my client. Anyways, here goes.
<rant>
I wrote a query is SQL (Squirrel) to help out one of our users. It's just a list report with four or five joins. I can export the data into html format, mess with the html markup a bit, and email it to the user, but I can't make it into a report! My client has a stupid requirement that to get access to Cognos Report Studio (the full-featured report creation tool), one must become Cognos Certified, which is no easy task and has no bearing on ones ability to create reports. Note that this is the only tool in the entire company that has a requirement like this.
So there's this stripped-down version of Report Studio called Query Studio. It's an abhorredly crippled version of Report Studio. It automatically aggregates, only lets you put one query per report, I could go on. I want to do the following: I have two tables, each with rows identified by date and serial number. I want to join them where serial number is the same and the dates are within 30 days of each other. Not too difficult, and in fact very easy to do in SQL.
The FOR-clause in expression <snip> is illogical because the expression contains multiple facts.
Yes, I know I'm joining two facts. No, I don't think it's stupid. Yes, I think you should just DO WHAT I TELL YOU TO DO!
This wouldn't be so annoying if my client didn't have that stupid certification rule.
</rant>
Sorry for pushing the Questionnaire thread off the front page to rant about my bullshit. It's a great thread.
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"I wrote a query is SQL (Squirrel) "
<FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Points for making me smile :)</FONT>
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Squirrel is a DB or what?
Anyway, If your DB supports views, make it into a view and feed that to crippled report maker like a straight-up table. Thats what I do when report consumer is Excel :P Makes management easy too...
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@death said:
Squirrel is a DB or what?
It's from the
argumentreasoned discussion on these very forums about how to pronounce SQL.
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I like Squirrel. I mean, I wouldn't use it in actual speech, but it amuses me imagining a squirrel grabbing my query and scurrying away.
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@death said:
If your DB supports views, make it into a view and feed that to crippled report maker like a straight-up table. Thats what I do when report consumer is Excel :P Makes management easy too...
That would work, but requires access to another tool (Modeler). If I could get into Modeler, I could do all kinds of neat things.
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Sounds to me like this is an opportunity to have your client pay for Cognos Certification, at an inflated rate of course.
