ODBC drivers and mdc's 1

[schizosquirrel]

Hi,

I know this is a really stupid request, but.....

I work in an organisation where Powerplay is the main management information tool. Unfortuneatly, the programmer who set up the cubes and reports left some years ago and the product knowledge was not replaced.

What exists now is a series of cubes that are extracts of data from a unix based db, and are designed present users with standard reports. This is coupled with a generally in experienced IT department who have no concept of SQL, RDBMS or the like.

I need to obtain data - initially I had hoped to do this from the main database, however this is not possible (for political reasons). However I have these lovely cubes that are downloaded onto my hard drive from cognos. They contain the detail of data I need.

My question is: given that I cannot interrogate and extract raw data in the form that I wish using Cognos, can I set up an ODBC that will allow me to query the cubes using MS-Query ?

This would in effect give me up to date information from our db, using the Cognos cubes - and allow me to set up various templates for my more detailed analysis.....all done on the privacy of my hard drive.

I know this is backwards, and all I can offer as an explanation is politics.....

 

[drlex]

Here is a convoluted way round your problem (as long as the dimensions and measures are not too numerous) => save ascii versions in the reporter mode of powerplay using crosstabs by way of intersections and import as tables into MS query.
Cognos have a KB article on it - 78972, which I post here.
Little comfort, I'm afraid to say
lex

(apologies to any Cognos lawyers).

"Example

You have products and countries
Add ALL the categories at LOWEST LEVEL children and mark INTERSECTION.
Add this to the rows and have your measures as columns.
Make sure appropriate filters are applied.

You'll now get a row for each combination with dots between the categories
e.g. Sports.Tents.Jan 1996.USA

Export this to Excel, then use "Text to columns" in Excel to split the categories back up into rows. You might have to repeat this in order to get all your categories in and then "join" the results."