Cognos: filter alternative?

[zurg]

Dear Experts,

I've defined a report in Cognos Report Studio.
I've also exposed this report in IBM BAM Business Spaces. I've used Report Viewer widget for that.
This widget allows end users to remove filters defined for the report. The data security is preserved (FGS applied), but they can access irrelevant data for specific report.
I would like to disable this (removing filters). Unfortunately this build-in widget is not allowing that.

As workaround I'm trying to use some other technique than filters to limit the data. I was trying to apply the filtering within the slicer.
My data is quite flat, and the data item I want to filter is not defined as dimension. That's probably the reason why it's not working for me.
I have a table with multiple columns.
My slicer definition:
filter([A_Events Query Subject].[ATracking_Events].[Status Code], [A_Events Query Subject].[A_Events].[Status Code] = 'Q')
Anyway, all data (not filtered) are shown as a result.

Any idea how this can be solved?

[MFGF]

Dear Experts,

I've defined a report in Cognos Report Studio.
I've also exposed this report in IBM BAM Business Spaces. I've used Report Viewer widget for that.
This widget allows end users to remove filters defined for the report. The data security is preserved (FGS applied), but they can access irrelevant data for specific report.
I would like to disable this (removing filters). Unfortunately this build-in widget is not allowing that.

As workaround I'm trying to use some other technique than filters to limit the data. I was trying to apply the filtering within the slicer.
My data is quite flat, and the data item I want to filter is not defined as dimension. That's probably the reason why it's not working for me.
I have a table with multiple columns.
My slicer definition:
filter([A_Events Query Subject].[ATracking_Events].[Status Code], [A_Events Query Subject].[A_Events].[Status Code] = 'Q')
Anyway, all data (not filtered) are shown as a result.

Any idea how this can be solved?

Hi,

The first and most important question is are you using a relational package or a dimensional package. If you're not sure, look at FAQ#5 in this post:

http://www.cognoise.com/index.php/topic,27563.0.html

The answer to the above will dictate how to answer your original question...

Cheers!

MF.

[zurg]

Hi MFGF,

thank you for your response.
it's relational package.

Any help here will be very needed, I'm a little stuck here.

[MFGF]

Hi MFGF,

thank you for your response.
it's relational package.

Any help here will be very needed, I'm a little stuck here.

Hi,

With a relational package, filters are the way to restrict the data being retrieved within a report. Slicers are specifically for use with dimensional packages, and you're not going to have any success trying to use them in this situation.

I'm not familiar with BAM or the widgets you get, but my gut feel is you'd need to define some sort of security for your widget so that users can't modify it (ie change filters). It's worth trying to find out how users are authenticating and if there's anything you can do that will restrict their capabilities. If this was within Cognos Workspace (for example) you can remove a user's ability to modify a workspace in the capabilities settings for Cognos. I'd hope there was something similar in BAM Business Spaces, but I have never seen it before so I have no idea if it can be done.

Cheers!

MF.