Multiple CSV Output in Cognos 8

On common problem in the daily business e.g. during the migration from Business Objects to Cognos is the export of multiple csv files from one single report. In full clients this is easily possible, heavily used and well accepted (for example by Business Objects Users) 

In Web applications which are based on a HTTP GET Request it is unfortunately impossible to accomplish such a feature since it is only possible to support one single file transfer through one single HTTP request. Therefore IBM Cognos 8 does by design return only the CSV File for the first query (alphabetic order). All other Queries will be ignored.

So, what is the recommend way to solve the users problem?

One possible way to do this would be to create a forward page which is able to decide based on the requested output format if the user should be forwarded to the normal report layout or a CSV helper page. The helper page itself will ask for the meaningful name or description of the query which should be exported.

After answering the query question the user will be forwarded to a simple csv report and is able to save the output. For using this functionality the requesting IBM Cognos Consumer has to have the right to execute reports with embedded HTML containers, otherwise the user will get an error message saying that his user rights are to low to execute such kind of report.

Overall this solution is  an acceptable workaround for reports which can´t be fully exported to CSV in IBM Cognos yet. Nevertheless if the output is needed for an daily progress it could be an option to save the csv output with an IBM Cognos SDK program on a central fileshare in the network rather than exporting the data manually. For sure also the use of the xml output format instead would be an good workaround.

Google Maps Polygon overlay with IBM Cognos 8

Sometimes customers are interested to display a map of regions or countries with conditional coloring applied. But those map extensions and programs are quite expensive… I want to present you a way where you can do the same - for no money - with all the advantages of a public and open map engine.

The requirements:

• an existing internet connection
• a version of the epoly.js file
• the coordinates preferably in xml format.

First of all we need to generate a key to authenticate our site properly to google. Using a key generated for a different site than our will fail with an error message.

The signup can be done at:

 http://code.google.com/intl/de-CH/apis/maps/signup.html

Then we need a placeholder in our report like this

<div id="map_canvas"   style="position:relative;width: 700px; height: 300px;"></div>

The map gets initialized by

<script type="text/javascript">
google.load("jquery", "1");
google.load("maps", "2.x");

function resizeMapContainer(w,h)
    {
        $("#map_canvas").width(w).height(h);
        map.checkResize();
    }

</script>

If the browser is ready and compatible we start

$(document).ready(function () {
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
    var polys = [];
        map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas"));
        map.setCenter(new GLatLng(42.16,-100.72),4);
        map.addControl(new GScaleControl()); 
        mapOv = new GOverviewMapControl();   
        map.enableScrollWheelZoom();
        map.enableDoubleClickZoom();
        map.enableContinuousZoom();
        map.setUIToDefault();
        // Workaround resize Issue with Google Maps (API 2.x)
        window.resizeBy(-1, -1);

Now we want to make the polygons…. We read the coordinates from the states.xml file and put an overlay on the map….

// Read the data from states.xml
      var request = GXmlHttp.create();
      request.open("GET", "states.xml", true);
      request.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (request.readyState == 4) {
          var xmlDoc = GXml.parse(request.responseText);
          // ========= Now process the polylines ===========
          var states = xmlDoc.documentElement.getElementsByTagName("state");

          // read each line
          for (var a = 0; a < states.length; a++) {
            // get any state attributes
            var label  = states[a].getAttribute("name");
            // read each point on that line
            var points = states[a].getElementsByTagName("point");
            var pts = [];
              for (var i = 0; i < points.length; i++) {
               pts[i] = new GLatLng(parseFloat(points[i].getAttribute("lat")),parseFloat(points[i].getAttribute("lng")));
             } 
                             if (states[a].getAttribute("name")==labels[a])
            {
            var poly = new GPolygon(pts,"#000000",1,1,colours[a],0.5,{clickable:false});
                polys.push(poly);
               map.addOverlay(poly);
            }
            }
                   // ================================================          
        }
      }
      request.send(null);
          }
        });

In my case the overlay result looks like this. States are colored by a revenue rank based on the Gosales DW Model. „Pretty cool!“

and even movable and zoomable !

Since the rendering and applying of the polygons is done on client side you should not do this for reports which are running on an old machines and / or slow internet connections.

You should somehow make sure that your report data matches the appropiate data in the xml. Best would be a matching id in the xml file according to the id to the data in the report. In my example I helped myself out by just checking the name of the state

if (states[a].getAttribute("name")==labels[a])

(labels[a] holds the report result name and colours[a] the suitable color for that region – if those match the state can be colored)

If you have questions do not hesitate to contact me.

Hv fun!