COGNOS Business Intelligence Series 7

Chapter 4: Deploy Cubes and Reports
Target Parameter
Filter Parameter
where:
specifies the target cube or report to open, specifies the filter
values, and specifies the format in which to open a report.
The following sections describe building the parameters to specify how you want a cube or report
to be displayed.
The target parameter is the name of the PowerPlay report or cube to run. The name must be the
name as specified in PowerPlay Enterprise Server - Administration, and is not the Upfront
NewsItem name.
If you publish a cube or report in PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration, the name is the
object name that you assigned to it, and may be prefixed with a folder name. If a report was saved
to Upfront from PowerPlay Web, it is the NewsItem ID that identifies the report, not its name.
The filter parameter is a string with the following format:
....
When you specify a filter, the dimension name and category codes must match the dimension
names and category codes known internally to PowerPlay. If PowerPlay encounters a dimension
name that has no match or a category code that cannot be found, it is ignored.
You can find the names and category codes by using the following steps.
Steps
1. Open a report or cube.
2. Drill down or adjust the view until you have the categories and dimension you require
displayed.
For example, you can filter on 1997 in the Years dimension, Tents in the Products dimension,
and Revenue in the Measures dimension.
3. Save the view as a .ppx report.
When you save the view as a .ppx report, it is available in the Imported Reports folder in the
ppserver directory.
4. In Upfront, click Report Properties, and then Advanced Properties.
5. In the Source Report Name section, locate the unique identifier for the report, and note its
filename and path.
6. Open this file in Notepad or any text editor.
7. Locate the following in the .ppx file:
where value specifies the filter parameters used in the report.
For example,
8. Locate the filters in the .ppx file, using their reference Ids.
For example, where the reference Ids are 277, 413, and 4, the following lines of code appear
in the .ppx file.
Note: If your dimensions do not have recognizable names, you can identify them by the
DimIdx. DimIdx="0" indicates the first dimension in the tree structure, DimIdx="1" the
second, et cetera.
56 Cognos PowerPlay (R)