Limit the Range of Dates Included in the Model

When you create the time dimension, you can limit the range of acceptable dates so that categories that are irrelevant to your users do not appear in their OLAP reports.

When Cognos® Transformer encounters date values outside your specified range, it generates an Early Dates or a Late Dates category, or both, depending on when the out-of-range dates occur. In addition, if there are dates that are neither early nor late, but can not be placed within the specified range, Cognos Transformer generates an Invalid Dates category.

Procedure

  1. Open the property sheet for the time dimension whose absolute range you want to change and click the Time tab.
  2. In the Earliest date and Latest date boxes, type the dates that represent the lower and upper boundaries of the range respectively and click OK.
  3. On the dimension line of the Dimension Map, click the time dimension and, from the Run menu, click Generate Date Categories.

    By default, the Range box shows the date settings you specified in step 2. However, you can change these if you want to generate a different range of date categories.

  4. Open the Categories diagram and check for an Invalid Dates category. If this is present, repeat steps 1 to 3, making any necessary corrections.