Getting Started with Cognos ? ?
- Cognos 8 BI applications overview
Cognos is a webbased reporting tool. Which is developed by IBM. For generating the reports using the existing database.We have in Cognos Framwork Manager, Cognos Connection, Query Studio, Analysis Studio, Report Studio, Event Studio, Drill Through Definitions and IBM Cognos Administration.
Cognos BI 8 components
Query Studio - a tool used for creating basic ad-hoc reports and a lighter version of Report Studio. It allows users to create one 1-page report at a time. Application used by Query Authors and Report Authors.
Report Studio - used to create and manage more advanced reports, which are very often standarized and executed periodically and distributed to people in various departments in an organization. Reports can engage dashboards with gauges, charts, maps and other graphical elements with a full drill-through capabilities. Reports designs created in Query Studio can be read and edited in Report Studio (and not the opposite way). Report Studio is used by Report Authors.
Analysis Studio - an application to analyze OLAP cubes and explore business data in a multidimensional manner. Large volumes of data can be analyzed through ranking, complex filtering, slicing, dicing and creating custom subsets. Mainly used by business analysts.
Metrics Studio - used for scorecarding, helps manage performance by monitoring and analyzing metrics at all levels of an organization. The idea behind it is to put performance indicators next to the organization's key performance measures (red, orange, green status notation) and link them to reports containing related information.
Event Studio - a process (an agent) which runs in background and monitors the data and reacts when something ocurrs which may cause a business problem in the future. For instance, if quantity of a product X on stock is less than a given value, event manager can send an email to a responsible person which will contain a warning with the problem description and a link to a cognos report.
Event studio takes such actions as: generating emails, running reports, updating news channel in a corporate portal or communicating with other software.
Aside from tracking actual products, it can also be used to monitor services. For example if the number of subscribers in, say, a mobile broadband service exceeds the set capacity, event manager can email the necessary people so the problem could be looked into.
Cognos Connection - it is a Web portal for Cognos 8 and a component which interracts with the Content Store. It is a frontend to publish, find, manage, organize, and view organization's business intelligence data.
PowerPlay Transformer and PowerPlay (Cognos 8 Business Intelligence Mobile Analysis ) - The Cognos 8 BI Mobile Analysis package is a new name for Cognos 7 PowerPlay applications. In fact, apart from the integration with Cognos 8 packages, there are no major changes since PowerPlay version 7.
Among others, the package includes the following applications known from Cognos 7 BI:
- Cognos PowerPlay Series 7 Version 4
- PowerPlay Connect
- PowerPlay for Excel
- Configuration Manager
- Cognos Scheduler
Content Store is a database where the metadata for all the Cognos 8 component is stored and managed centrally.
Content store can be accessed directly with the Framework Manager.
Framework Manager is a Cognos 8 modeling tool for creating and managing business-related metadata for use in all Cognos 8 BI applications. It lets modelers model relational data dimensionally, apply hierarchies to allow drill behavior, apply member functions and query any of the supported data sources (relational database with SQL or OLAP with MDX).
The main users of Framework manager are data warehouse developers and data modelers. Report authors base on the metadata information set up using Framework Manager when creating new reports.
Cognos Series 7 and IBM Cognos 8 BI products comparison
Cognos 8 is a completely different product than Cognos 7.
Cognos series 7
- Cognos PowerPlay
- Cognos PowerPlay Web
- PowerPlay Excel
- Impromptu
- Cognos WebPortal
- Visualizer
- DecisionStream
- PowerPlay Transformer / Impromptu Administrator
- Metrics Manager
- Notice cast
- Planning
IBM Cognos 8 BI
- BI Mobile Analysis (PowerPlay)
- Analysis Studio
- IBM Cognos 8 BI Analysis for Microsoft Excel
- ReportNet (Report Studio + Query Studio)
- Cognos Connection
- GO! Dashboard / Report Studio
- Data Manager
- Framework Manager
- Metrics Studio
- Event Studio
- Planning
