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Dont waste your money But I was so starved for some type of documentation I remained hopeful. Some of the reviews warned me about the content of this book being inadequate but I wanted to try it anyway. They were right- this book is terrible.
Find something else or take a training class. If you need to learn Cognos from the ground up, do not waste your money on this book. If you need a book to learn how to use Cognos 8 or plan to use this book for training, DO NOT use this book. If one is already familiar with Cognos and needs to have a reference book, than this book is okay.
No communication from either the seller or Amazon.com.The book is a must for my business. Today, July 18th, I am still waiting for my copy. We are upgrading to Cognos 8 and I need the book for reference.IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence: The Official Guide Help. I would love to review the book, but I am still waiting for my copy. I ordered a copy from Amazon.com on June 24th with an SLA end date of July 10th.
It spends only a page or two on some very big topics.There seems to be a lack of Cognos BI books out there, but trust me, this book is not going to help you all that much. I cannot say I have read this book completely, but I am currently trying to learn how to use Cognos 8.4 and as I work with the product I find myself turning to this book to clarify something or teach me something. Otherwise, steer clear of this book, it's useless for in-depth details on how to use Cognos 8.4 BI. If you want a very high-level overview of some of the Cognos features, without going into too much detail on how to really work with the tool, and if your company is paying for the book, then by all means pick this up. Each time, I come up empty. This books appears to have only the most high level information, it goes into no detail whatsoever.
Some of the book's sections are really good like Framework Manager. They call this book the official guide and I'm really surprised they did that. Another important example they should have included is using a drill through to details on the same report. Specifically the examples on pages 277, 259 and 329.
Like an idiot, I spent $75 on this book (Barns and Noble). To make matters worse, they have no online reference for the corrections like Wrox publications does. On some of these examples, you are better off using the "Try it yourself" sections in the Cognos help file. I would have got a better deal on Amazon here going thru one of the used book dealers.
Those pages deal with placing totals on subgroups when using a union query, editing a query on a singleton and inserting hierarchies into reports. Overall, shame on McGraw Hill for putting their name on such a rag of a book. Please don't buy this book new like I did - you'll be wasting your money. I had problems with several of the examples as they seemed to have left out important information.
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