suggestions welcomed on a high level implementation strategy for a report

[cognosfreelancer]

Folks

I want to run by you a requirement that was recently dropped in my lap for your suggestions on an implementation strategy.

The first time this report is run the user is presented with two prompts one for Customer Name and the other for the date range.

The report output that is generated will contain three sections of data each of different type. So far so good.

In between section 1 and section 2 will be a drop down box that will contain a list of all products for which data exists in sections 1 through 3. Note that this is not simply a list from the product master table instead only those products for which data exists should be displayed.

Further the above prompt should also have a special value for 'All' and enable multiple select.

Each of sections 2 and 3 will also have a drop down box for selecting ranks for e.g. top 10, top 20 and so on.

It is envisaged that the user can select appropriate values for all three prompts and then re execute the report.

The second time the report is executed it should ideally use the data retrieved from the first execution as we will be querying from within that data set.

Below are two options that I have in mind currently:

Option 1

Develop a ReportNet report that runs for a customer name and date range and returns HTML output with the three sections and the three drop down boxes.

I do not know how effective caching would be for the second time execution of the report.

Also the report output should contain controls for the three prompts and ideally a 'SUBMIT' button to relaunch the second execution. I never did this before, is it feasible.

Option 2

Because the report is so interactive develop a Powerplay cube and query it through a ReportNet report. However we are not in Cognos 8 yet.

We use ReportNet 1.1 MR3 and PPES 7.3.

My apologies on the long posting.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

Regards
NKT

[COGNOiSe administrator]

Option 3 - Cognos Web Services