Report Reference

[dpccgf]

We are using the new Report Reference functionality in Report Studio.  We have referenced 70+ reports going against TM1 cubes.  All referenced reports have prompts.  The report booklet has prompts that feed into the reports.  The booklet runs in 15 minutes which is actually really good.

The issue is the prompts.  It basically takes 5 minutes to bring them up, about 20 seconds to set them and then 5 minutes to get back to the report running.  So the net is 10 minutes for a prompt and 15 minutes to run.

When saving the prompts in a report view it works, you just then run the report. 

However, anytime you want to change prompts you are back to taking forever.  The less reports we have the faster the prompting works.  We could break up the booklet but the user wants a full workbook.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[bdbits]

There are 70+ prompt pages? So then each prompt page is taking on average about (5*60)/70 or 4.2 seconds to build. Depending on what is on the prompt pages, that does not seem unreasonable.

Or do you mean any one report, on its own, is taking 5 minutes to build a prompt page? That would be a problem. But without knowing anything about your data sources (db? relational? dimensional? cube?) or the nature of the prompts you are building, it is difficult to say what might be happening. Perhaps you could share further details.

[dpccgf]

Thanks for the reply bdbits.....here is some information.

The prompt of the Report Booklet, which references all the other reports has three prompts:  Year, Company, Budget Scenario.  The prompt query goes against a TM1 cube, and the prompt page when run with no reports in the booklet comes up quick.  However, when you begin adding booklet items (reports) the prompt page in the "booklet" starts slowing down.  Each booklet item I have has the same three report prompts and each booklet item added is going against TM1 cubes.

When you look at it like you said, 4.2 seconds per report, it does not seem unreasonable and that is what happens when you run one of the booklet items (reports) all by itself.  But then taking 70 x 4.2 seconds, your right.

I guess I thought this would work a little better.  Like doing the booklet prompt page, selecting your prompts, then passing them into the reports as each one is run.  Kind of a like a drill-through.  But it is like doing that for all 70 reports before you even run the booklet.  The end result of the booklet is great, just need to get past this issue.

I know this is a new function in Report Studio, so maybe I just am missing something.  Have a call logged with IBM but checking here!

[bdbits]

To be honest, we only have one project using booklets and I did not write those reports. Thus, I do not have enough experience to say what exactly happens when it runs.

I can certainly see how you'd think it just passes the prompts down the line, but I've come to see that you can never be sure how Cognos actually is working without a lot of traces.  ;D

If IBM solves the issues, be sure to come back and share the solution for the future benefit of others.

[rockytopmark]

Not sure about Cognos 10.2.1 or higher, but in Cognos 11.0.n there is a property setting on the Report Reference that is set to Ignore or Merge parameters.  Ignore, as implied will not take parameters from outside, but Merge will allow report to accept parameter values already set.  Works like a champ.