Testing Approach

The following testing to be done at the Cognos Report testing.. 

1. Header and Footer validation
2. Prompts Validation
3. Database Validation
4. Buzz matrix validation
5. Functional validation 
6. Hierarchical Validation
7. Validation of Charts
8. Validation of Reports
9. Security Validation
10. GUI Validation 

To validate the data a SQL query needs to be framed and the result of the same should be compared against the data in the report. The generic SQL query for a report should contain all the necessary tables, the joins and the overall filters that have been identified as the reports requirements. 

• Check weather all the required fields appear on the prompts page as per the BRD
• Check weather a red line/astreik  appears  below all the mandatory as defined in the BRD 
• Check the GUI element type (List box,text box, radio button,check box ,calendar drop down box for the each report.
• Check weather the multiselect field allow multiples values to be selected . 
• Check whether the contents of each field are based on security entitlements of the user running the report. 
• Check whether the run button is enabled only when all the mandatory fields are selected. 

Security :

Security can be implemented in Cognos for all reports. The security profiles of the users who can run the reports are stored in the back end tables. When a user generates a report, data from the database gets filtered out based on that user’s security profile