Cognos 10 Report Studio

IBM Cognos Report Studio is a Web-based report authoring tool that professional report authors and developers use to build sophisticated, multiple-page, multiple-query reports against multiple databases. With Report Studio, you can create any reports that your organization requires, such as invoices, statements, and weekly sales and inventory reports.

Use Report Studio for reports that:

• are intended for a wide audience
• exist long enough to require maintenance for changing requirements and data
• require detailed control over the appearance

Your reports can contain any number of report objects, such as charts, crosstabs, and lists, as well as non-BI components such as images, logos, and live embedded applications that you can link to other information.

You can create reports in IBM Cognos Report Studio using either a relational reporting style or a dimensional reporting style depending on the type of data source you use. The Report Studio tools and query language are the same. However, it is important to choose a reporting style to ensure that you are making the most of your data and to avoid mixing dimensional and relational concepts.

The IBM Cognos Report Studio user interface has two panes, an explorer bar, and a work area to help you create reports. IBM Cognos Report Studio can be used in the Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox Web browsers. Report Studio uses the native Microsoft Internet Explorer XML support, which is a component of the browser.

You can also programmatically create or modify reports by using an editing tool to work with report specifications. You then use the IBM Cognos Software Development Kit to implement the reports in your IBM Cognos BI environment. This is useful if, for example, you must make the same modification in many reports. Rather than opening each report and making the change, you can automate the process using the Software Development Kit, thereby saving you time.