What is the error in this case...when statement? - cognos

Could anyone say what is the wrong with the below statement.
Currently I'm working in cognos 10.1.1
case
when extract(month,_last_of_month (current_date))=1 then ('January')
when extract(month,_last_of_month (current_date))=2 then ('January','February')
end
I couldn't correct it.
The error code is qe-def-0459 cclexception parsing error

it should return only one value,
case
when extract(month,_last_of_month(current_date)) = 1 then 'January'
when extract(month,_last_of_month(current_date)) = 2 then 'January, February'
end

I also believe in all Case Statements in Cognos you must have an else condition as well. I don't have cognos in front of me and cant remember the syntax of the functions you are using but it looks good.
Also i remember in some versions of cognos you had to convert the eval expression to the same as the return type meaning since you are returning text instead of expr = 1 you would have to Cast(expre, varchar) = Cast(1, varchar) --- Not sure if this is the case in 10 but it definitely caused problems sometimes as recently as 8.3 and 8.4

Related

Does 'position()' have to be explicitly included in this Xpath?

This returns all the first 'nd's as expected
select="osm/way/nd[1]"
This returns all the lasts:
select="osm/way/nd[last()]"
This returns both:
select="osm/way/nd[position() = 1 or position() = last()]"
Is there a syntax to remove position() function?
Something like this, but works?
select="osm/way/nd[[1] or [last()]]"
There has been some debate about allowing a new syntax to select a range https://github.com/qt4cg/qtspecs/issues/50#issuecomment-799228627 e.g. osm/way/nd[#1,last()] might work in a future XPath 4 but currently it is all up in the air of a lot of debate and questionable whether a new operator is helpful instead of doing osm/way/nd[position() = (1, last())].

Cognos Report Studio: CASE and IF Statements

I'm very new in using Cognos report studio and trying to filter some of the values and replace them into others.
I currently have values that are coming out as blanks and want to replace them as string "Property Claims"
what i'm trying to use in my main query is
CASE WHEN [Portfolio] is null
then 'Property Claims'
ELSE [Portfolio]
which is giving me an error. Also have a different filter i want to put in to replace windscreen flags to a string value rather than a number. For example if the flag is 1 i want to place it as 'Windscreen Claims'.
if [Claim Windscreen Flag] = 1
then ('Windscreen')
Else [Claim Windscreen Flag]
None of this works with the same error....can someone give me a hand?
Your first CASE statement is missing the END. The error message should be pretty clear. But there is a simpler way to do that:
coalesce([Portfolio], 'Property Claims')
The second problem is similar: Your IF...THEN...ELSE statement is missing a bunch of parentheses. But after correcting that you may have problems with incompatible data types. You may need to cast the numbers to strings:
case
when [Claim Windscreen Flag] = 1 then ('Windscreen')
else cast([Claim Windscreen Flag], varchar(50))
end
In future, please include the error messages.
it might be syntax
IS NULL (instead of = null)
NULL is not blank. You might also want = ' '
case might need an else and END at the bottom
referring to a data type as something else can cause errors. For example a numeric like [Sales] = 'Jane Doe'
For example (assuming the result is a string and data item 2 is also a string),
case
when([data item 1] IS NULL)Then('X')
when([data item 1] = ' ')Then('X')
else([data item 2])
end
Also, if you want to show a data item as a different type, you can use CAST

invalid input syntax for type numeric: " "

I'm getting this message in Redshift: invalid input syntax for type numeric: " " , even after trying to implement the advice found in SO.
I am trying to convert text to number.
In my inner join, I try to make sure that the text being processed is first converted to null when there is an empty string, like so:
nullif(trim(atl.original_pricev::text),'') as original_price
... I noticed from a related post on coalesce that you have to convert the value to text before you can try and nullif it.
Then in the outer join, I test to see that there's a limited set of acceptable characters and if this test is met I try to do the to_number conversion:
,case
when regexp_instr(trim(atl.original_price),'[^0-9.$,]')=0
then to_number(atl.original_price,'FM999999999D00')
else null
end as original_price2
At this point I get the above error and unfortunately I can't see the details in datagrip to get the offending value.
So my questions are:
I notice that there is an empty space in my error message:
invalid input syntax for type numeric: " " . Does this error have the exact same meaning as
invalid input syntax for type numeric:'' which is what I see in similar posts??
Of course: what am I doing wrong?
Thanks!
It's hard to know for sure without some data and the complete code to try and reproduce the example, but as some have mentioned in the comments the most likely cause is the to_number() function you are using.
In the earlier code fragment you are converting original_price to text (string) and then substituting an empty string ('') if the value is NULL. Calling the to_number() function on an empty string will give you the error described.
Without the full SQL statement it's not clear why you're putting the nullif() function around the original_price in the "inner join" or how whether the CASE statement is really in an outer join clause or one of the columns returned by the query. However you could perhaps alter the nullif() to substitute a value that can be converted to a number e.g. '0.00' instead of ''.
Sorry I couldn't share real data. I spent the weekend testing small sets to try and trap the error. I found that the error was caused by the input string having no numbers, which is permitted by my regex filter:
when regexp_instr(trim(atl.original_price),'[^0-9.$,]') .
I wrongly expected that a non numeric string like "$" would evaluate to NULL and then the to_number function would = NULL . But from experimenting it seems that it needs at least one number somewhere in the string. Otherwise it reduces the string argument to an empty string prior to running the to_number formatting and chokes.
For example select to_number(trim('$1'::text),'FM999999999999D00') will evaluate to 1 but select to_number(trim('$A'::text),'FM999999999999D00') will throw the empty string error.
My fix was to add an additional regex to my initial filter:
and regexp_instr(atl.original_price2,'[0-9]')>0 .
This ensures that at least one number will be in the string and after that the empty string error went away.
Hope my learning experience helps someone else.

Error handling - convert #NUM to zero

I'm writing a macro to cycle through a number of different spreadsheets that are in exactly the same format as each other. The source spreadsheets contain data in a table which occasionally contains the #NUM error (thanks to something going wrong in a different model!)
I have managed to account for all other error types, and some interesting formatting rules, using the below with a few other Case statements:
If IsNumeric(resultsarray(q,p) = false then
Select case ResultsArray(q,p)
Case IsError(ResultsArray(q, p))
ResultsArray(q, p) = 0
Case Left(ResultsArray(q, p), 2) = "0 "
ResultsArray(q, p) = 0
Unfortunately #NUM doesn't seem to fall into IsError's purview. Does anyone out there know how I can simply overwrite the error with a zero/0?
Thanks in advance!!
Steph
This #NUM error occurs if the input is not a valid number. On your situation i suggets you to check whether the input is number or not instead of error check. This way you can check #NUM error as well.(Or you can do it both) With IsNumeric(<input data here>) you can do it. So just add one more case (IsNumeric) to your select case.

passing Jan of selected year by default in prompt

I have 2 year-month prompts. If I don't select any year-month in 1st prompt, report should by default, run from January of the same year, selected in 2nd prompt. My prompts are value prompts and have string values. Please help me materialise the requirement. I have already tried # prompt macro, ?prompt?, case when etc. I am nto sure, If javascript would help.
I'm going to assume your underlying date fields are not stored as DATE value types since you're using strings. This may be easier split into 4 prompts: from month, from year, to month, to year.
The filter would then be an implied if:
(
(?FROM_YEAR? = '' or ?FROM_MONTH? = '') and
[database_from_month] = '01' and
[database_from_year] = ?TO_YEAR? and
[database_to_month] = ?TO_MONTH? and
[database_to_year] = ?TO_YEAR?
)
OR
(
(?FROM_YEAR? <> '' or ?FROM_MONTH? <> '') and
[database_from_month] = ?FROM_MONTH? and
[database_from_year] = ?FROM_YEAR? and
[database_to_month] = ?TO_MONTH? and
[database_to_year] = ?TO_YEAR?
)
The above style filter is superior for many reasons:
More likely to be sargeable
Easy to understand
Uses simple built-in Cognos functions; more likely to be cross-version compliant
No issues with cross-browser support you would get with Javascript
Code snippet would work in other Cognos studios (Business Insight, etc)
You've likely seen CASE statements in filters throws an error. The CASE statement is passed to SQL, not compiled into a SQL statement via Cognos. Hence it's not seen as proper syntax.

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