Hacking Datasets in 11.1 – and some wonderful news!
The previous article I wrote on the subject doesn’t work on 11.1. It looks like IBM is wisening up to my tricks. So here’s the new way to do it.
This is actually significantly easier than the way I posted before. To start, create a list report as normal. The list should be standard: no groups, no footers or headers, no subtotals at all. Save and close the report.
Next, reopen the report. This gives us the correct URL parameters we need:
https://SERVER/ibmcognos/bi/?perspective=authoring&id=i62549E69468542B288D1DFA3859A6BF1&isViewer=false&isNewFromModule=false&isNewFromPackage=false&isNewDataSetFromModule=false&isNewDataSetFromPackage=false&isTemplate=false&isDataset=false&UIProfile=Titan&cmProperties%5Bid%5D=i62549E69468542B288D1DFA3859A6BF1&rsFinalRunOptions%5Bformat%5D=HTML&rsFinalRunOptions%5Ba11y%5D=false&rsFinalRunOptions%5Bbidi%5D=false&rsFinalRunOptions%5BrunInAdvancedViewer%5D=true&rsFinalRunOptions%5BDownload%5D=false&rsFinalRunOptions%5Bprompt%5D=true&rsFinalRunOptions%5BisApplication%5D=false
Change that to isDataset=true and press enter. The page will reload with the report in the dataset skin of report studio. Save it as a new dataset – this new object will be a regular dataset, you can refresh it from the portal screen as normal.
Now for the wonderful news. IBM has for some reason decided to grant me IBM Champion status! Ignoring the immediate instinct to question their sanity, I want to assure everyone that this accolade won’t change anything about my blog. I certainly won’t let this go to my head, and my ego shall remain carefully grounded. In other, completely unrelated news, I will be selling opportunities for selfies with me in Think 2019!
Congratulations 🙂
Paul, you were always my Cognos Champion! Congrats to the welll deservedly title.
(Checks schedule for that selfie)
Amazing Paul, great to read this. From now on, you shall be called “Paul the godfather of Cognos and further stuff”. Have great holidays 😉
bg “charon” mike
Congrats!
Congratulations Paul. Well deserved!
The champion status is very well deserved, Paul!
Of course, we’ve always known you are the champ. IBM a little late to the party.
About this hackery – I’m fiddling about on 11.0.10 and it doesn’t seem to like it. When I re-open with Dataset=true, is briefly displays ‘Data Set’ in the switcher, but then reverts to ‘Reporting’, and then to the name of the report.
Any ideas?
This used to work but no longer an option in 11.1.2. Have you ever got this to work in this version??
The thing to remember is that each version will be a little different. So the tip I give next may not help with a later version.
Once you open the dataset, press ctrl-alt-shift-m. You should get the full Report Studio interface. The button to insert the data items will still be hidden, but you can use the developer toolbar to unhide it.
Hi Paul,
is there any new approach?
I tried it with 11.1.2 and 11.1.4
The URL has no flag “isDataset” (I also added the flag, but this did not work).
Also ctrl-alt-shift-m showed the full reporting interface, but I could not copy one query (with subselects and unions etc.) from an existing report or build the queries from scratch in the dataset with the unhidden toolbars.
The piece you’re missing is to use the browser dev toolbar to unhide the hidden buttons.
When you’re in the report studio open Dev Toolbar (F12) go to console and select the correct frame from the dropdown. You’ll know the correct one when the report is highlighted. Then paste in the following code:
var style = document.createElement('style'); style.innerHTML = '.clsTabBox_inactive {display:table-cell !important;}'; document.head.appendChild(style);