Creating your own data set

Create a personal data set by uploading a Microsoft Excel or delimited text file to the Cognos® BI server. The data from the file will be imported into a repository.

Modify your data set and publish it to Cognos Connection as a package. After publishing, you can use other Cognos Business Intelligence tools, such as Cognos Workspace Advanced or Report Studio, to perform tasks such as analyzing or reporting on your data.

You can import multiple files to your data sets repository. To manage all of your data sets, go to the My Data Sets page.

Before you begin

The administrator must first grant you access to these two Cognos Connection components:

  • a Data Sets repository

  • the My Data Sets page

About this task

You can import the following file types:

  • Microsoft Excel files, with either .xls or .xlsx extensions
  • delimited text files, containing either comma-, tab-, semi colon-, or pipe- separated values
  • Compressed files of any of the supported file types. For example, you may choose to compress your delimited text file as a .zip file to improve upload time.
Note: If you are importing a data file with locale-specific formatting, it must be either .xls or .xlsx format. Delimited text files that are formatted for a different locale are not supported when you create a data set.

To maintain system performance, there are limits to the size of files that you can upload. The administrator can modify the default values of the maximum file sizes, if required. The following table lists the default maximum values.

Table 1. Default maximum file sizes for personal data sets
Description Default value (KB)

Maximum file size of a non-.xlsx imported file

 100,000

Maximum file size of a .xlsx imported file

 3,000

Maximum total size of imported files per user

 100,000

Procedure

  1. In IBM® Cognos Connection, in the upper-right corner, click My Area Options My area icon, My Data Sets.
    Tip: You can also click My Data Sets from the Welcome page.

    The My Data Sets page appears. It lists all of the data sets that you created and displays information for each data set.

  2. In the upper-right right corner of the My Data Sets page, click Import data Import data icon.
  3. If your administrator granted you access to more than one repository, select a data source and then click OK.
  4. Click Browse, double click the file that you want to import, and then click Open.

    The file is uploaded to the Cognos BI server and the data is then imported into the repository as a table.

    Tip: If you import a large file and close the window before the import has completed, a message tells you that the import will continue in the background.

    The Import data window appears. The left pane lists all the column names in the imported file and metadata for each column. The right pane shows a preview of the table.

  5. If you want, you can modify the data set before you publish it or publish your data set as a package,
  6. To leave the data set unmodified and unpublished, click Close.

Results

The My Data Sets page appears, showing your new data set, the date and time that it was created, and the size of the uploaded file.

Tip: You can check the number of rows in the data set to confirm that all of your data was uploaded successfully.
Parent topic: Personal data sets