Does crosstab have extra categories like visualization

[farlein]

Hi all,

I need to put a crosstab in my active report. There are 8 categories but I only want to show 3 of them in the final crosstab, two in row and one in column. I want to filter on all 8 of them though. I can put all categories in the crosstab and filter on them, but the crosstab is too large. The large crosstab makes the active report respond very slowly (almost frozen for 1 minute) if users play with check boxes to search specific information they want. That is why I only want to show 3 of them to make the crosstab smaller.

Because I cannot put all categories directly in the crosstab, I used a data deck. I am able to filter on all of them by putting extra categories in the data deck and build a master-detail relationship between the data deck and the crosstab. I got what I want, however, it takes much longer time to generate the report, and the data deck does not accept multiple choice which I need in some cases.

I am wondering whether there are some other ways to filter on some categories in a crosstab but not show them. For example, can I make crosstab similar to visualization? Visualization only show 2 to 3 categories in final graphs, but I can throw whatever categories in the extra category area and filter on them, which is very neat. Any ideas? I appreciate any suggestions.

[MFGF]

Hi all,

I need to put a crosstab in my active report. There are 8 categories but I only want to show 3 of them in the final crosstab, two in row and one in column. I want to filter on all 8 of them though. I can put all categories in the crosstab and filter on them, but the crosstab is too large. The large crosstab makes the active report respond very slowly (almost frozen for 1 minute) if users play with check boxes to search specific information they want. That is why I only want to show 3 of them to make the crosstab smaller.

Because I cannot put all categories directly in the crosstab, I used a data deck. I am able to filter on all of them by putting extra categories in the data deck and build a master-detail relationship between the data deck and the crosstab. I got what I want, however, it takes much longer time to generate the report, and the data deck does not accept multiple choice which I need in some cases.

I am wondering whether there are some other ways to filter on some categories in a crosstab but not show them. For example, can I make crosstab similar to visualization? Visualization only show 2 to 3 categories in final graphs, but I can throw whatever categories in the extra category area and filter on them, which is very neat. Any ideas? I appreciate any suggestions.

Hi,

If you have already tried including the items in the crosstab and filtering (and it's performing too slowly at runtime) then the only other option is to use a data deck - as you have done. Crosstabs don't have "Extra Categories" buckets like visualizations, sadly.

One other thought - what browser(s) and version(s) are you using? I remember seeing some really poor performance when filtering in IE9 but switching to IE11 made things amazingly faster.

Cheers!

MF.

[farlein]

Thanks for your information, MF! Our Cognos version is 10.2.1, and I am using IE 11. My guess is IBM designed visualization very well to fit active reports, but will need some modification on existing items in the tool box.

Thanks,
CC

[irvingbos]

Another reason lists and xtabs perform more poorly than visualizations is that (as at 10.2.2) vis's have thier data stored internally in the MHT as JSON, whereas lists and xtabs data are stored as XML, which is much more bulky. There is an RFE to get lists and xtabs data stored as json as well, to enhance performance.  Vote early, vote often!   ;)