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Data modules

Cognos Relative Dates in 11.2

July 15, 2021 by Ryan Dolley 7 Comments

Relative Dates are a powerful feature of Cognos Analytics data modules that enable quick and flexible comparisons between time periods. For example, comparing revenue for the current year version the previous year, or the current week of the month vs the same week last month. These comparisons are popular across all lines of business but especially in the office of finance, which relies on period over period analytics as a bedrock of analysis. The video below covers how to set up and use relative dates in Cognos Analytics.

Live demonstration of relative date functionality in Cognos Analytics.

Relative dates are a feature exclusive to data modules. If you want to use relative dates in Framework Manager, your best bet is to extract the necessary fields into a data set. You can then import the data set into a data module and set up relative dates there. In all likelihood you’ll also get better query performance because data sets are great!

Setting up relative dates

There are two components to the relative date functionality in Cognos Analytics, Relative date filters and relative date measures. They are both easy to configure and use. To set them up you need the following:

  • The ability to use data modules
  • Access to the ‘Calendars’ folder that ships with Cognos
  • Data that includes a ‘date’ or ‘date/time’ data type column
  • The ability to use the linked module feature of Cognos

Your administrator can turn on the relevant permissions. Once that’s done, it’s simply a matter of following the steps in the video above, but I’ll summarize them here:

  1. Open the data module that requires relative dates
  2. Slick the ‘add source’ button
  3. Navigate to and select the calendar you want. Cognos ships with three by default, Fiscal, Gregorian and 5-4-5. You can create custom calendars as well.
  4. Your data module will now contain a new linked calendar table. This table is easy to recognize as it will be slightly transparent and turquoise.
  5. Now select any date or date/time column in your data and open the properties. Select your calendar table under the ‘lookup reference’ property.
  6. Congratulations, you have configured your relative date filters!
  7. Now select any measure column in your data and open the properties. Select the date you just configured in step 5 under the ‘lookup reference’ property.
  8. Congratulations again, you have configured your relative date measures!
  9. Click on the arrow next to either column to see the filters or measures you created.

Relative date filters

Relative date filters provide drag and drop capability to instantly filter any visualization, table or crosstab to the selected period. By default there are 23 relative date filters, but you can create more by editing the calendar files that ship with Cognos.

A list of all relative date filters in Cognos Analytics
Create all these relative date filters with just a few clicks. Amazing!

Relative date measures

Relative date measures are similar to relative date filters but represent the measure value on a visualization rather than a filter. Think of it as the line on a line chart. There are 23 relative date measures by default but by all means, customize.

A list of all relative date measures in Cognos Analytics
Relative date measures galore!

Relative dates in action

If you’re having a difficult time picturing the final product of relative dates, here’s a simple chart to make it easy to understand how useful they are:

Current year vs previous year is a common relative date comparison that you'll build using the Cognos relative date function
Relative dates in action on a line chart

Above you can see a common but powerful analysis. On the X axis we have the months of the year, and on the Y revenue totals. Using relative date measures I can easily plot two lines, one for current year and one for previous year for comparison. I am able to do this with zero coding or SQL. As a bonus, these relative periods will always be up to date – when the year rolls over into 2022, the value of Prior Year automatically updates to 2021.

As-of-date analysis

By default Cognos Analytics assumes the current date as the point of reference for relative date analysis. Therefore, the final piece of the relative date puzzle is enabling as-of-date analysis. This global parameter allows users to select the ‘as of date’ for the relative time feature. It’s easiest to think of this by asking yourself, relative to what date am I counting ‘year to date’ or ‘month to date’. Is it today? Last Friday? December 19th, 1982?

The as-of-date global parameter allows users to easily select the target date for relative date analysis
The as-of-date selector in Cognos Analytics 11.2

Configuring the as-of-date global parameter is a task for administrators and is very easy:

  1. Open the manage menu and select ‘Customization’
  2. Select the ‘Parameters’ tab
  3. Click ‘New’
  4. Type ‘_as_of_date’
  5. Select the ‘More’ menu (the ellipsis that appear when you hover over the parameter) and click ‘Properties’
  6. Click ‘Applied to all roles’ if you want everyone to have this capability
  7. Log out of Cognos
  8. Log back in to see the global parameters button appear in the upper-right corner of the UI

Cognos relative dates in summary

There you have it. Reading back over this blog post there are a lot of steps included, but don’t get intimidated. This is remarkably easy compared to writing relative date calculations or using SQL to do it. The video above walks through every single step included in this blog post so watch and follow along. And don’t forget to like and subscribe to the Super Data Brothers channel!

IBM documentation references

Relative date documentation home
Sample calendars
Creating a data module for relative date analysis
Creating relative date filters
Customizing the reference date


Keep reading for more awesome Cognos content!

  • Cognos Union Queries in Reports
  • Cognos Relative Dates in 11.2
  • The 2021 Gartner BI Magic Quadrant is Broken for Cognos Analytics
  • Data Modeling for Success: BACon 2020
  • Cognos Analytics 11.1.6 What’s New

What are Cognos Data Modules?

April 8, 2020 by Ryan Dolley 23 Comments

Cognos Data Modules are a web-based data acquisition, blending and modeling feature available in Cognos Analytics. They first hit the scene as part of Cognos 11 and are meant to supplement and eventually replace Framework Manager for both self-service and IT data modeling needs. I’ll pause for a second to let you long-time Cognoids hyperventilate a little… is everyone back? Good. Through this and subsequent posts I’ll try to dispel misconceptions about this awesome feature of Cognos while making you comfortable and – dare I say – excited to use them.

Cognos data module in action
Data modules – the wave of the future

Data Module Features

Imagine a data modeling solution that has the following features:

  • Easy to install and manage
  • Join dozens or hundreds of tables across multiple databases
  • Execute cross-grain fact queries
  • Build simple or complex calculations and filters
  • Build alias, view, union and join virtual tables
  • Secure tables by groups, roles and data elements
  • Create OLAP-like dimensional hierarchies
  • Enterprise governance, auditability and security

 ‘Okay easy, I’m imagining Framework Manager’ you’re thinking right now. Yes! But, add in:

  • Natural-language and AI powered auto-modeling
  • Automatic join detection
  • Easy integration of excel data
  • Automatic extraction of year, month, day from date data types
  • Automatic creation of relative time filters (YTD, MTD, etc..) and measures (YTD Actuals, MTC Actuals, etc…)
  • In-memory materialized views (data sets)
  • In-memory query cache
  • Direct access to members for relational sources!

‘Well that’s not Framework Manager… it must be Tableau, right!?’ No, in fact Tableau doesn’t offer even half of these capabilities. This is what every Cognos Analytics customer gets out-of-the-box in data modules today, with more features being added all the time.

Who are Data Modules for?

Many of my longtime customers have the misconception that data modules are for ‘end users’ only and that real data modeling can only be accomplished in Framework Manager. Conversely my new customers have built entire BI practices while having no idea what Framework Manager is. Clearly something is out of sync here, so let me make it very clear: Who are data modules for? If you’re reading this, the answer is you.

The Business User

The line between ‘end users’ and the BI team has gotten fuzzy in the last few years as increasingly complex models are built by people outside the IT department. Data modules are ideal for someone who wants to quickly and easily combine enterprise data with departmental data or excel spreadsheets and cannot wait for IT to build an FM package or SSAS cube. The interface is clean and easy to use and the ease of creating custom groups and building relative time calcs makes data modules an ideal place to combine data – even easier than Excel in many cases. As an added bonus, it’s very simple for the IT team to take a ‘self-service’ data module and incorporate into enterprise reporting without significant development work.

The Cognos Pro

Many Cognos pros kicked the tires in 2016 and could only see the yawning chasm of functionality that separated data modules from Framework Manager, myself included – for years I encouraged my clients to consider them for niche applications but to rely on FM for anything important or difficult. No longer! As of the 11.1 release, data modules have reached feature parity with Framework Manager is almost all respects and even surpassed FM in important modeling automation tasks like relative time automation. It is no longer the obvious choice to default to Framework Manager for new Cognos development.

Data Modules vs Framework Manager

Given the enhancements to data modules, which should you choose? As of the 11.1 release my recommendation is to do all new development in data modules for the following reasons:

  • Significantly easier and faster to create
  • Great features like relative time, date column splitting, grouping
  • Target of all future development
  • Unlock modern BI workflow

These points are explored in detail here – for now I’ll leave you with a final thought. My new clients use the same ol’ Cognos to deliver with the speed and scale you’d expect from Tableau or Power BI – my friend Vijay can tell you all about it. The key differentiation between them and legacy Cognos installations with orders of magnitude more resources is the embrace of data modules and the iterative, build-it-in-prod approach to BI delivery that data modules enable.


  • Cognos Union Queries in Reports
  • Cognos Relative Dates in 11.2
  • The 2021 Gartner BI Magic Quadrant is Broken for Cognos Analytics
  • Data Modeling for Success: BACon 2020
  • Cognos Analytics 11.1.6 What’s New

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