Question regarding "reference date"

[Rob Prop]

Hi,

In our BI solution we have lots of reports and dashboards with stuff like YTD and QTD reports. Now we are using the current_date function to get the data needed. However we now often get the question to show the data of the previous year or quarter. We kan solve this by specifying a prompt in every report to set a "reference date". But this means that the use of cognos connection needs to fill in this prompt for every report.

Is there a way to set some kind of session parameter / global variable that can be used in every report, and create a report (or something like that) where the user can set this parameter/variable to a specific value. By default the parameter/variable should be the current date or empty.

If empty we can define in the report something like: if (global_date is null) then report_date = current_date() else report_date = global_date)

Two questions:
- Does this make any sense, anybody got the same questions and how did you solve this
- How to get this working

We are using both Cognos 10.1 and Cognos Express 9.5/10.1.

A complex method we are now thinking of is to create a dummy report that is using a query with a user defined funtion that "secretly" does a writebeack to a database to save the username and reference date. This can then be selcted in every report.

Any help is appriciated