Report Studio is a web-based tool and the reports designed in Cognos Report Studio are accessed through a web browser. This allows us to do certain web page specific things; for example, embedding our own HTML code or JavaScripts.

Often, business users need certain functionality which is not naturally available in Cognos Report Studio. Hence, a new area has evolved over the period in the Cognos Report Studio developer's world—that is Javascripting.

With JavaScript, we can do certain manipulations on the objects used for prompt pages. Please note that this was not officially introduced in initial Cognos documentation. However, lately many such techniques were published on the Cognos website itself.

In this chapter, we will see some recipes that will teach you very useful and commonly required functionalities achieved using JavaScripts. All these recipes are valid for Cognos versions 8.3 and 8.4. These versions are quite recent and most organisations will be moving on to 8.3/8.4 this year. Also there isn't much material available for these versions on the Internet. Hence, I am providing you with code for these versions.

For prior versions, some code changes will be required. There are a lot of examples and reading material available for prior versions (CRN, 8.1 and 8.2) on the Internet.

After trying these recipes, you can build upon the ideas to write more sophisticated scripts and do a lot with your Cognos Reports. Please note that IBM doesn't directly support these techniques and does not guarantee any upward or backward compatibility. However, they are aware that developers are widely using them, and hence IBM will try to maintain most of the objects, properties, and events in future. (Reference: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg24021973)

The level of JavaScript that we will be using in this chapter is basic. However, if you have never used JavaScript before, I would recommend getting familiar with JavaScript basics using books or online tutorials. http://www.w3schools.com/js is a good resource with a nice collection of samples and provides a quick tool to try your own scripts.

Please note that all the JavaScript-based recipes will need you to enable JavaScript in your web browser. Usually, it is enabled by default.