Query Studio is Cognos 8 BI’s user-friendly reporting tool. Whereas Report Studio is a full-blown and powerful developer tool, Query Studio is very much drag-and-drop. It is accessed from a link in Cognos Connection.

Although Query Studio is primarily an ad-hoc reporting tool, allowing you to examine your data with next to no development overhead, analyses can be saved in Cognos Connection and even converted to Report Studio reports to be possibly enhanced at a later date.

Reports can be produced in lists, crosstabs and various types of charts. The available chart type are:

· Pie
· Column
· Bar
· Line
· Area
· Column-line
· Radar

These can be configured to add more flexibility, for example a stacked bar chart is a type of bar chart, and there are different ways you can display values in a pie chart (eg value or percentage of total).

Dimensional Data
By using dimensionally-modelled data you can drill up or down on your data, for example from Year to Quarter, then Month. You can also drill through to to get more detail from other reports on a particular row, for example.

Calculations
Calculations can be created by, say multiplying two columns together to create a third. However, for complex calculations use Report Studio or get the calculation included in the package – which makes it available in Query Studio.

Summarising Data
Rows and columns are automatically summarised according to how the data has been defined in the package. For example, numeric values would usually be totalled, but a percentage might be averaged, or recalculated from a total value.

Data can be grouped, for example by month or department, or even department within month. Totals are automatically maintained by Query Studio. Or columns and rows can be sorted.

Conditional Styles
Conditional styles allow you to highlight areas of interest in the report, for ease of analysis. For example, if revenue for a division falls below $100,000 this can be displayed in red, revenue between $50,000 and $100,000 in amber, and revenue above $100,000 in green.

Filters and Prompts
Filters can be added to limit the data displayed. In many cases of ad-hoc reporting this will be necessary. For example if your package contains data for the past five years and you only need to see data for the current year, it may take too long to display all five years, so a filter can be added to the year to limit the output.

Prompts provide a menu for saved queries so that the user can decide what to filter on at run time. So the European Sales Manager might filter on, say Europe division, whereas the Americas Sales Manager only sees data for the Americas.

Templates. Pre-designed templates can be applied to your Query Studio reports to give them the layout and general look-and-feel of your organisation. Logos can be added to the template if desired.