data item with varchar2 as measure in fact cells of COGNOS 8.3 cross tab report

[screations9]

hi everybody when i am placing a data item with varchar2 in measures in cross tab , its not showing any values in output .please help me its really urgent and most important for my job.. i know that in general measures are numeric but always challenging task will be like this to do something which never happened ??
please help me

[Sreeni P]

Hi screations9,

Alias with data item, in that 'cast' the original data item with numeric type

[Sreeni P]

hei...screations9,
Sorry for my reply, it's not possible in your case....and it is not possible to cast a varchar data to numeric..
may be we can share with our moderators of this forum..

[MFGF]

Hi,

Crosstabs in Cognos 8 are not designed to use non-numeric measures.  So far I've not come across anyone who has been able to come up with a working solution.

The only option I can suggest is that you log an enhancement request with IBM.

MF.

[blom0344]

you NEED to bring in a numerical value (with an aggregate set) to the crosstab body. However you can 'trick' Cognos to show non-numerical values by defining a report expression as source type for the crosstab fact cells:

Code Select Expand


CASE
WHEN [Que: 4. ].[FASE_NUM] = 0 THEN '-'
WHEN [Que: 4. ].[FASE_NUM] = 1 THEN 'SO'
WHEN [Que: 4. ].[FASE_NUM] = 2 THEN 'SV'
WHEN [Que: 4. ].[FASE_NUM] = 3 THEN 'SB'
WHEN [Que: 4. ].[FASE_NUM] = 4 THEN 'EB'
WHEN [Que: 4. ].[FASE_NUM] = 5 THEN 'EP'
ELSE '' END


It looks like this is not a matter of 'designed as works', but all 8 versions accept this 'trick' ...

[angela]

You can also put a fake data item (like the number 1) in the body, unlock the report, drag your text item in the cell next to the fake numeric data then use formatting to hide the number one (font color or some such).

[actcognosuser]

Unlock .In the crosstab properties set Define contents asYes and drag in the varchar data item.

Also changing the aggregation properties might help.