Differences Between Macro & Prompt In Cognos

Macro:

A macro is a fragment of code that you can insert in the Select statement of a query or in an expression.

A macro may contain one or more macro functions. A macro is delimited by a number sign (#) at the beginning and at the end. Everything between the number signs is treated as a macro expression and is executed at run time.

• Is a dynamic object which returns a value when executing a query
• A macro can be placed in any part of the SQL statement

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Differences between macro & prompt

Macro- A macro is a set of instructions that can run applications. A macro is a dynamic object which is used to substitute the values at query run time.

Example : A macro can open your catalog,select a report(say for instance) convert that to another format and export it to any specified location,provided the code (Program)is such.

Prompt- A prompt specifies the manner in which data in the reports are to be displayed. A Prompt can be defined at the catalog level either or during report generation. Prompt is dynamic condition which select the value or enter the value at query run time  

• A macro is a non user interactive object where as prompt is a user interactive object
• The macro returns a single value, but a prompt can return multiple values