Sorting Dimensional Data

You can sort items to view them in your preferred order. By default, IBM® Cognos® Analytics - Reporting retrieves items in the order defined in the data source. OLAP data sources always have a defined order. The data modeler defines the sorting options in the model.

For more information about data modeling, see the IBM Cognos Framework Manager User Guide.

Tip: The Sales Growth Year Over Year sample report in the GO Data Warehouse (analysis) package includes sorting.

Limitations When Sorting SAP BW Data

If you use a SAP BW data source, each level in a hierarchy has an item with the same name as the level and a role of _businessKey. Such items are known as level identifiers. You should use only the level identifier of all the time-related characteristics, such as 0CALDAY and 0CALMONTH, for sorting. All other (attribute) items in these hierarchies are formatted string representations of the characteristic values with which they are associated. These formatted values sort alphanumerically and not chronologically.

Tip: By level identifier, we are referring to a query item with the same name as the level that has the role of _businessKey. Each level in a SAP BW hierarchy has a level identifier.