Here are some of the changes that you'll encounter when developing in Cognos 8.3
1. When a query returns no data, you can now choose to provide a message or to remove the data item from the report. The new No Data Contents property was added to many data containers such as lists, crosstabs, and charts. You can also choose to not render the entire report page if all the data containers on the page do not contain any data.
2. A series of new functions were added in the expression editor to make report expressions more powerful. The new functions give you the flexibility to create report expressions for reporting and conditional processing. Thy include a new mathematical function named mod(), time-based functions, and conversion functions. Of interest to PowerCube users are the cube variables that can now be added to report output. The double2string( ) function can be used in data type conversions.
The following functions return the named PowerCube properties:
● CubeName( )
● CubeDescription( )
● CubePath( )
● CubeCreatedOn( )
● CubeDataUpdatedOn( )
● CubeSchemaUpdatedOn( )
● CubeIsOptimized( )
● CubeDefaultMeasure( )
● CubeCurrentPeriod( )
● CellValue( )
3. Reports can now span two or more page widths in a PDF. This is useful when you want wide data in lists and crosstabs to show in its original size. The fit-to-page option from previous releases is still available. You decide for each list or crosstab which items span across pages and which items shrink to fit a single page.
4. The Microsoft Excel 2000 format for report outputs is deprecated in version 8.3.
