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April 2009 Newsletter
In This Issue
BSP Accepted into IBM GSD
Meet Us at IBM Cognos Forum 2009!...
Technical Tips and Tricks
Checking Your Progress...
IBM Cognos Articles of Interest
Did You Know...

News

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Greetings!
 
Welcome to the April 2009 BSP Newsletter.

This month we are proud to announce our acceptance into the IBM Global Solutions Directory, an online directory containing thousands of applications, tools and services from IBM and IBM Business Partners.  Our Integrated Version Control, MetaManager and CPM Explorer software products are all part of our growing portfolio of solutions that will be on display at the upcoming Cognos Forum in Orlando this May.  If you are not able to make the forum, please have a look at our redesigned software website for more information (http://www.bspsoftware.com). 
 
In addition, we will be hosting an upcoming joint webinar in early May with IBM Cognos.  Stay tuned for more, and as always, the recording along with our other podcast recordings of IBM Cognos tips and tricks will be available on our software website.
 
As always, we enjoy hearing your suggestions regarding the content you'd like to see.  Please e-mail us if you have a topic you'd like to see discussed in future newsletters.
BSP Software Solutions Accepted into the IBM Global Solutions Directory
 
 
BSP Software's Integrated Version Control, MetaManager and CPM Explorer solutions have been added to the IBM Global Solutions Directory. The Global Solutions Directory is the IBM repository of Business Partner offering information.
You can find out more about IVC, MetaManager, CPM Explorer and our other products and utilities in our growing portfolio of solutions at our recently renovated website http://www.bspsoftware.com.   

Meet Us at IBM Cognos Forum 2009!

IBM Cognos Forum 2009 is approaching fast. Meet us there. Details are given below:  
IBM Cognos Forum 
When : May 12-15,2009
Where: Rosen Shingle Creek, Orlando, FL
Visit IBM Cognos Forum to learn more and register.
The IBM Cognos Forum is the one annual event not to miss!  Nowhere else is so much vital information packed into such a condensed schedule.  And the lessons learned at Forum come from practical, customer experience and not from a text book.  Don't miss your best educational and networking opportunity of the year.  The session scheduler is about to go live, and the most popular sessions will fill up fast.
 

IBM Cognos has extended the early bird discount of $500 until April 30th.
 
 
Stop by the BrightStar Partners booth (#20) in Performance World to say hello, meet some of the faces behind the monthly newsletters, and find out more information about our tenured professional services and implementation-based software.

Preserving the Top-N Functionality in a DMR Report During Drill-Down

- Contributed by Mark Karas, Senior Consultant -
 
If we create a report based on a DMR model and use the Top-N functionality to limit the children displayed in the report, this functionality is not preserved in the drill-down using the default method. The steps below will show how the Top-N functionality can be preserved during a drill-down.
 
The reports explained below are based on the Go Sales package available in the Cognos samples.
 
Original Report:
  • Create a Bar Graph report using the package with the following items in the query.
    • Year
      [Sales].[Time].[Time].[Year]
    • Revenue
      [Sales].[Sales].[Revenue]
    • Top 2 Product Lines
      (For this example, we will limit the Graph to the Top 2)
      TopCount([Sales].[Product].[Product].[Product line],2,[Revenue])
  • Add the Year as series, Revenue as measure and Top 2 Product Lines as the X-axis.
  • You will observe that the graph shows only top 2 product lines but as we drill down on any of the two product lines, we see all children of the product line. The Top 2 functionality is lost on drill-down.

Modified Report:

  • Create a query with the following query items in it.
    • Year
      [Sales].[Time].[Time].[Year]
    • Revenue
      [Sales].[Sales].[Revenue]
    • All Products
      [Sales].[Product].[Product].[Product(All)]->[all]
    • Product Lines
      children([All Products])
    • Top 2 Product Lines
      TopCount([Product Lines],2,[Revenue])
  • Modify the Query Properties to define Member Sets
    • From the Query Explorer, click the Queries link.
    • Single left-click to select the Query 1 query object.
    • In the Query Properties window, locate the Define Member Sets property and set to Yes.
    • Double-Click on the Query 1 object to edit the query contents
    • At the bottom of the page, note a new Tab is available, named Member Sets ... click to select it
    • From the Insertable Objects window in the upper left, Drag the Product Lines query item into the member sets window (on the right, currently empty)
    • Rename this item Product Lines MS
    • From the Insertable Objects window in the upper left, Drag the Top 2 Product Lines query item into the member sets window and onto the existing Product Lines MS member set
    • Rename this to Top 2 Product Lines MS
  • Modify the Report's Drill Behavior
    • From the Data menu, select Drill Behavior...
    • Click the Advanced tab
    • Click the Product Lines data item
    • Set both the Drill Up and Down behavior to "Replace Expression"
    • Click the Top 2 Product Lines data item
    • Set both the Drill Up and Down behaviors to "Preserve"
    • Click OK
  • Test the report

Again we see the desired Top 2 Product Lines only.  When we drilled earlier on Camping Equipment, we saw 5 Product Types.  With our changes we now see only the desired top 2. We have now preserved the Top-N in the drill-down.
 

Additional Information

  • The above technique has been tested in IBM Cognos 8.3.
  • For receiving a detailed step by step guide along with screen shots, e-mail to newsletter@brightstarpartners.com 


Checking Your Progress 

- Contributed by Chris Howard, Consultant -

Finishing with the goals initiated the first of the year; 1) Eat Healthy, 2) Lose Weight, 3) More gym time, 4) Refine Planning and Forecasting.
  1. Eat Healthy
    • Although the economy is helping us to stretch our dollar we should be able to tighten our belts by now if you have been true to your New Year's resolution.
    • Use olive oil in recipes as it has higher nutritional value, high in Omega 9, is not hydrogenated oil, high in polyphenols (a powerful antioxidant) and monounsaturated fat, helps lower blood pressure and increases bile production which helps prevent gallstones.
  2. Lose Weight
    • After a meal, do the dishes and clean the kitchen. This little bit of exercise and "busy work" helps keep the body moving and burns some calories you just consumed plus you will have to do it anyway.
    • Share a dessert and a drink a cup of black coffee. This small change reduces the amount of calories in half and the coffee has caffeine, which helps speed up the metabolism.
  3. Get to gym more often
    • Head to a gym nearby your workplace before work. You can beat the morning commute and you will have more energy to start the day.
  4. Refine my annual planning and forecasting process
    • Take advantage of the new increased personalization features and user interface features in 8.4:
      • hierarchy support
      • sorting and hiding
      • freeze panes
      • end-user tab management
      • calendar selector
      • zoom
      • word wrap
    • Advanced personalization blends planning and analysis features to improve user productivity and accuracy within the planning process and provide greater context for forecast data entry. 

Take advantage of the new features in IBM Cognos 8.4 suite of products. The enhanced incorporation with Business Intelligence, GO! Dashboards and Planning provide your business the tools you need to perform reporting, analysis, forecasting and dashboarding for easily accessible data when you need it and how you want to see it.

IBM Cognos Articles of Interest


 
 
 
Interesting SupportLink articles:

Did You Know...

About Pi...

Pi is the most famous ratio in mathematics. It is the number of times a circle's diameter will fit around the circle.

The decimal places go on forever, making it "irrational," and it can't be expressed by any algebraic equation, making it "transcendental."

No apparent pattern emerges in the succession of digits - a predestined code found in nature yet unfathomable.
  • Pi History
    • Pi possibly first entered human consciousness in Egypt.
    • The earliest known reference to pi occurs in a Middle Kingdom papyrus scroll, written around 1650 B.C.
    • Early Greek calculations had determined that pi is approximately 3 1/7
    • In A.D. 190, the Chinese calculated pi to five places: 3.14159.
  • Pi Decimal Race
    • In September 1999, Dr. Kanada of the University of Tokyo calculated 206,158,430,000 decimal digits of pi.
    • In September 2002, he and his team broke their own world record, with 1.2411 trillion digits, over six times more than before.
  • Pi Birthdays (3/14....like 3.14)
    • Albert Einstein
    • Kirby Puckett
    • Billy Crystal
    • Quincy Jones
    • Michael Caine
  • Pi Limerick
    • "The number pi's a ratio pal. Whose fame is international. C to diameter, endless parameter, to me it's all irrational!"
  • Pi Haikus
    • A circumference divided by diameter irrational pi.
    • Unending digits... Why not keep it simple, like Twenty-two sevenths?
The first 1000 digits of Pi: 3.14159265358979323
846264338327950288419716939937510582097494
459230781640628620899862803482534211706798
214808651328230664709384460955058223172535
940812848111745028410270193852110555964462
294895493038196442881097566593344612847564
823378678316527120190914564856692346034861
045432664821339360726024914127372458700660
631558817488152092096282925409171536436789
259036001133053054882046652138414695194151
160943305727036575959195309218611738193261
179310511854807446237996274956735188575272
489122793818301194912983367336244065664308
602139494639522473719070217986094370277053
921717629317675238467481846766940513200056
812714526356082778577134275778960917363717
872146844090122495343014654958537105079227
968925892354201995611212902196086403441815
981362977477130996051870721134999999837297
804995105973173281609631859502445945534690
830264252230825334468503526193118817101000
313783875288658753320838142061717766914730
359825349042875546873115956286388235378759
375195778185778053217122680661300192787661
11959092164201989
 
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