schedule report to excel format

[Peewee71]

I have a report which i've generated and have set it to run via a schedule - The output format is in excel 2002. The schedule runs fine, though when i try to open the excel file it takes several minutes to open.

I have taken the sql from the report and generated the file via TOAD, when comparing the size of the same report one generated by TOAD and the other via Cognos both in excel format the size differs massively with the cognos version in my example being 6x larger.

If I view the contents of the cognos file in notepad, the file seems to be mainly xml which it is why it is so much larger. I guess that when excel is opening this file it must be converting the xml into excel format, hence why it is taking so much longer to open.

My question is: I need to quicken the file opening process and ideally elimnate the xml conversion process that is happening. This i'm sure will reduce the 7 minutes it takes to open my report. How best can i achieve this this in Cognos?

[billylodz]

use 2007 if you have 8.3

[Peewee71]

I'm afraid we have version 8.2 and are not able to upgrade yet due to a third party vendor agreement..

any other suggestions?

[blom0344]

Try and use the SQL in Microsoft Query (usually installed with office) and use this as a datasource in Excel. One can then open the sheet and refresh the contents by using the SQL in Microsoft query.
If the query is to complex to handle , then create a database view (based on the SQL) and point MS query to this view...