Now consider making the same changes of database vendor if all your reports use the same Framework Model. Let’s say you had 1000 reports and 10 developers working on the project so you are probably looking at 3-6 months of work to translate all your reports. If you have several 1000 reports (my current client has approximately 22,000 of them) how long would it take you to go through each and every report to ensure the SQL worked with your new database. Have you considered what will happen if you change database vendors say from SQL Server to Oracle, you will have to go through the SQL in every single report and make changes for the new database – I hear you say its only SQL it shouldn’t need changing for a change of vendor but you would be seriously wrong – every vendor has their own specific syntax for SQL – yes 80-9% is common it is just the other 10-20% that causes the problem.

Once you take the step of writing the SQL for individual reports you are making your reporting solution more complex than it needs to be as each report then has specific SQL tailored for that report. They ignore the benefit of using a properly structured and well documented Framework Model for writing the bare SQL and incorporating it into reports. Unfortunately this seems to be the way far too many organisations use Cognos.

Cognos sql prompt