Report VERY Slow When Totaling a Query Calculation Column (Relational)

[NVFlyAngler]

Greetings,

I'm relatively new to the IBM Cognos world but have a decent amount of experience with SQL and other reporting tools such as Crystal Reports.

I'm authoring a report in which I'd like to aggregate on a report line as opposed to a summary line. My query calculation goes something like:

total(IF ([DataItem1] = 'X') THEN (1) ELSE (0))

Regardless of how I try to aggregate, report performance effectively stops. I've tried total(CASE WHEN yada yada yada), and I've also tried applying aggregation properties (Aggregate Function - Total and/or Rollup Aggregate Function - Total) to the column instead of the total function in the query calculation (I found both of these suggestions in this forum). Same disappointing results.

Any suggestions? Am I approaching this entirely wrong?

Many thanks in advance!

Ken