Hi All,
As dynamic sorting of lists usually appears to be a hot topic I thought this new proven practice article (28/01/2011) might be of interest. This procedure uses custom toolbox items to allow the report designer to add the sorting logic to the report.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/reporting/scripting_techniques/page515.html
Rgds
Rob
Well, this one is also a JS solution and there are more elegant JS based solutions (and even one that uses part JS to generate up and down arrows and part prompt macro+block to do the actual sorting) out there if anyone wanted to use it. This one would at the most save the bother of having to copy paste the sort JS in every report. The inherent problems, though, as I see it with this solution are:
1) Good luck trying to convince the admin team (unless you work in a smaller environment where you're the developer, modeler, admin et all ;)) to modify xml files.
2) I think with each subsequent version, the .xml files will need to be updated again. Not a 100% sure, but I think it might be the case because I have seen at previous clients where the system.xml and some other files were modified to accomodate the client's branding within Cognos, the modified xml files had to be updated each time it was upgraded.That's a real pain in the backside.