Choosing where visualizations are rendered

When you add a visualization to an IBM® Cognos® Active Report, you can choose to render the visualization on the IBM Cognos server or on the client.

About this task

Visualizations that are added to regular reports are always rendered on the Cognos server. Visualizations that are rendered on the Cognos server are rendered as static images. Client-side visualizations are rendered as JavaScript code. Report size and performance are affected by whether visualizations are rendered on the server or on the client. For example, static images might increase the report size when there are many of them, but performance might be better.

Some visualization properties are available for only one of the render methods, and other properties are modified when you change the render method. For example, the Container Filter property, extra values drop zones, and extra categories drop zones are not supported when you choose to render visualizations on the Cognos server.

If you want to enable client-side filtering in the visualization, you must choose to render the visualization on the client.

Note: In the visualization definition, visualization authors can specify to render a visualization only as JavaScript or only as a static image. When a visualization supports only one output type, the visualization property Render Method is not available. In addition, visualizations that can be rendered only in JavaScript do not appear in the Visualization Gallery when you author regular reports.

Procedure

In the active report, select the visualization.
In the Properties window, click the Render Method property and choose the render method that you want.