Cognos Forum 2007

[MDXpressor]

I have been approached by Product Management about offering an OLAP Functions session including some proven practices.  I am curious to know how well met a topic like that might be.  Let me know your thoughts.  What challenges do you think a session like this should speak to? 

Relative Time is always popular, but is there any other challenges that you face and are stuck with?

[MFGF]

Hi Chris,

My experience so far is that many folks attending the authoring courses have heard of MDX but have not seen the power of member-based reports, calculations or filters before (or if they have it's only ever been in PowerPlay and they have not made the mental leap to using that functionality in Report Studio).  I often find my groups are amazed at the power and simplicity of some of the functions, but I never seem to have enough time to do them justice in my courses.  If you are planning to offer a session covering more examples in this area, my suspicion is that you'd get booked up pretty quickly (and probably have to find a bigger room!)

There's also the certification angle to consider too.  If folks are going to be sitting the Cognos Academy Author exam, they will need to have a pretty good grasp of the syntax and usage of some of the MDX functions, so you could perhaps include that as one of your "selling points" too?

Good luck! :-)

MF.