Don't query data before prompts on report page are filled

[hespora]

Hi there,

I'm trying to design an interactive report with prompts on the main report page (rather than a separate prompt page). However, I want to suppress cognos executing the main query until the prompts are actually used once and the reprompt button is clicked.

Of course, an obvious way would be to recreate all the prompts I'm using on a separate prompt page. Is there any way to avoid this?


Kind regards,
Mark.

[BigChris]

I would have thought it would have to run the report / query in order to present the page.

One cunning wheeze I've used before now is to make the prompt page look like the prompt area from the report page...so it looks like it's doing what you want, but it's really presenting a prompt page. And of course you can just copy the prompts that you've already created on your report page into your prompt page...so you don't need to recreate anything.

[Lynn]

Perhaps set default values for the prompts that will yield no data and then style the no data area to be blank or to show some message.

[hespora]

I think I'll go with setting defaults that will result in no data returned. Thanks for the input, both of you! :)

[navissar]

There is another way. It does require some work though.

You can put all your report data in a conditional block (Or a block with a render variable). Then, you use JavaScript to populate a hidden prompt with a "Show" value when pormpts are first submitted, and use that hidden parameter to populate your variable.

There are also ways to do this without scripting, but these are specific and not general. For example, you could place the block with your report in a singleton assigned to a query that returns 0 rows if a mandatory parameter wasn't selected, and your variable will refers to the row count.