Impromptu report returns no data ?!!!

[steever]

Hi,

I'm stumped. We have a report that has been running fine for a couple of years and seems to have suddenly gone off the deep end. It no longer returns any data - though the hotfiles its using as a source have lots. Nothing has changed with this report, nor any of the underlying hotfiles it uses. It seems to run and do stuff (takes 2 hrs to run) but then spits out nothing, just the column headings, etc.

I've tried re-building up the summary filter to see where the data 'disappears' but each time data is returned as it should. I have not completley built up the filter as it is extremely long and unwieldy and because it takes a long time to run. I've tried copying up our development copy of the report and running it to see if something had corrupted with the report but it too outputs nothing even though it runs for its normal length of time.

Anyways, the client is starting to complain (as well he should) , and i'm at a bit of a loss to know what else to try with this thing. Any suggestions??

cheers.

Steve

 

[griffindm]

Steve,

I stopped using hotfiles a while back, but I would often have a similar situation involving hotfile-based reports. In my case the report would suddenly crash for no apparent reason.

What I would do is to 'deconstruct' the report a layer at a time, until the data in the hotfile(s) reappears. The idea is to see what action is critical to the reappearance of the data. Do this by taking out lookup table references first, followed by function calls. Obviously, this is done in a COPY of the original report.

Once you have figured out what the action is that causing the suppression of the data, you may have a better idea of how to get the data to remain in the report, while getting the results you want.

Hope this works for you.

Dave Griffin


The Decision Support Group
Reporting Consulting with Cognos BI Tools
"Magic with Data"
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