This recipe will show you another view/option available in Cognos Report Studio to examine and edit the reports.
- Open the report in Report Studio and go to the report page.
- From the menu, choose View | Page Structure.
- You will see the report page transforms into a tree-type list object.
- Open different nodes and examine the objects.
As you know, the report definitions in Cognos Report Studio are nothing but XML files. The report objects, Page, List, Columns, and so on are all stored internally as nested tags.
By switching to Page Structure view, you can actually see how the objects are contained within each other and are inter-related. You can select any object (for example, List Columns Body Style) and manipulate its properties. You can also delete them, copy the objects and paste them in another place, and move them around within the rules governed by Cognos Report Studio.
This is a great way to examine and manipulate some report objects that are not directly visible in the normal view. We had mentioned in the 'Report Studio Environmental Options' recipe that when you hide some objects on the report page, and if the hidden items are not made visible by changing the environment options, then the only way to select and manipulate them is to do it from Page Structure View.
I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with this view. Do some browsing, copying / deleting of objects, and try changing properties of some objects. Later, you can go back to the normal view by selecting View | Page Design from the menu.