Cognos: Using DataItem value in conditional variable expression

Question

Hi all,

I've a list which has a column 'YEAR'. I want to make the recent year(2010) appear bold in that 'YEAR' column. I tried this expression

IF ( [myQuery].[YEAR] = [myQuery].[RECENT_YEAR]) THEN ( "RecentYearBold" )

where [RECENT_YEAR] is a DataItem with the expression maximum([YEAR])

This throws me an error and it doesn't allow me to use the DataItem in conditional variable expression. Can anybody help?

Error I get:

RSV-VAL-0002 Invalid expression IF ( [myQuery].[YEAR] = [myQuery].[RECENT_YEAR] ) THEN ( "RecentYearBold" ). CRX-API-0005 An error on or around the position '34'. The variable named '[myQuery].[RECENT_YEAR]' is invalid.

Answer 1

I was able to accomplish what you are trying (after getting the same error you did) by taking the following approach:

1. I created the [recent_year] column to be the following: maximum ([cognos_test].[year] for report). (You could use a different scope, if desired.)
2. Created a boolean variable in Conditon Explorer called recent year with the following expression: [Query1].[year] = [Query1].[recent_year]
3. I added the year column to the list, set the style variable = recent year and applied the conditional bold formatting to the year column when recent year = true
4. At this point, when I executed the report, I received the same error you did. Validating the report gave a little more information, which indicated that the [Query1].[recent_year] field needed to be in the list as well. When I added it to the list, the conditional formatting worked. (Really not sure why this was the case, but I went with it.)
5. To hide the [recent_year] column (while still leaving it in the list) you can set the "Box Type" property for the "List Column Body" and "List Column Title" objects for the recent_year column to "None".