Setting Up the Sample Audit Reports

You must set up sample audit reports before you can use them.

Procedure

1. Create a data source connection to the logging database. The logging database and data source in  Cognos Connection must be named Audit.
    
2. Set up the Report usage report to create new data source named url_xml and using the URL as the connection string. This data source is only used by the Report usage report.
3. Import the sample audit reports.
   The file IBM_Cognos_Audit.zip is included with your installation and is located at c10_location/webcontent/samples/content.
   Copy the file to c10_location/deployment directory, then import the sample IBM_Cognos_Audit.zip. In the public folders content list, select the check box for Samples_Audit.
   The audit reports reside in the Public Folders area of IBM Cognos Connection.
4. Run the sample audit reports.
   Tip: In IBM Cognos Connection, click Public Folders > Samples_Audit > Audit, and click the audit report that you want to run. The Multi-tenancy reports folder contains the sample reports for a multi-tenant environment.
   Depending on the audit report that you select, you are prompted for report criteria.

Changing the default processing of burst reports

Starting with version 10.2.1, internal processing of burst reports in  Cognos BI is different than in earlier versions of the product. You can change the product defaults to revert to the type of processing that was used in earlier versions of the product.

About this task

To change the product defaults for burst reports processing, use the following advanced settings:

RSVP.BURST_DISTRIBUTION

This setting corresponds to the Run in parallel option in the user interface.

Values: true (default) or false

When you change the default value, burst reports run sequentially in one process, which takes more time.

 

RSVP.BURST_QUERY_PREFETCH

This setting corresponds to the Use query prefetching option in the user interface. This functionality is applicable to dynamic query mode relational models only.

Values: true or false (default)

When you change the default value, you enable query prefetching. As a result, the burst report outputs are produced much faster because the queries run in parallel with the report rendering.

To complete the process, you must also modify the xqe.config.xml file.

 

BDS.split.maxKeysPerChunk

This setting corresponds to the Maximum key limit option in the user interface.

Values: Positive integer. The default is 1000. The value of 0 sets no limit on this parameter.

Setting the key limit lets you avoid complex SQL clauses when the RSVP.BURST_DISTRIBUTION setting is set to true.

The settings must be changed globally, for the whole IBM Cognos environment..

 

Configuring advanced settings globally

You can configure advanced settings globally for the whole IBM Cognos environment.

About this task

 

The values that you specify are acquired by all contained entries. You can override the global values by specifying custom values at the dispatcher or dispatcher service level.

If the configuration entry contains child entries with settings that override the global settings, the custom settings on the child entries can be reset to use the default values.

You can configure advanced settings globally for the logging, tuning, environment, and administrator override categories.

Procedure

 

Click Launch, IBM Cognos Administration.

 

1.On the Configuration tab, click Dispatchers and Services.
2.In the toolbar on the Configuration page, click the Set properties – Configuration icon Set properties – configuration.
3.Click the Settings tab. 
4.To filter the list of settings, from the Category list, select a category.
5.
Choose the required setting from the list, and specify a value in one of the following ways:

◦Enter a value
◦Select a value from a list
◦Click Edit and add a parameter name and value

 

6.Optional: To reset the child entries to use the default settings, select the Delete the configuration settings of all child entries check box.
7.Click OK.
8.To apply the values, stop and restart the Cognos services.


 

New Features in Version 10.2.1

External object store for report archiving

You can configure the Content Manager to store report output to a local drive or network share instead of in the content store database by configuring an external object store.

Ability to set content archiving for My Folders

You can now choose to set content archiving for your users' My Folders.

 

Granular deployment of My Folders
You can back up and deploy individual users' My Folder content without need for a full content store deployment.

 

Enhanced tenant administration functionality
The tenant management functionality in IBM Cognos Administration was consolidated into a single tool. Using this tool, system administrators can view all tenants registered in the Cognos BI environment, deploy the tenants, or delete the tenants.

 

Cognos Mobile sample audit reports

The new sample reports show IBM Cognos Mobile audit data.

 

Extensible visualizations

IBM Cognos active reports can use a new set of visualizations that introduce new chart types, greater interactivity, and ease of authoring. To use this feature, an administrator must import visualizations into a visualization library to make them available to Report Studio authors.

 

Improved processing of burst reports

New burst options improve internal processing of burst reports on the server. This functionality contributes to improved performance of the product.

 

 

Standalone & Embeded Filter

Stand alone Filter: Use a stand-alone calculation when you want to reuse the expression. You can apply a stand-alone calculation to one or more dimensions or query subjects to provide calculated data to a report, or include it in a package to make it available to your users. By moving a stand-alone calculation or a shortcut to it into a folder, you can better organize your model objects. Embeded fileter: Use an embedded calculation when you want to use a calculation with only one dimension or query subject. You can create an embedded calculation when modifying a relational data source query subject, model query subject, or dimension. other way we say that... Creating and using the filter inside a query subject while building it. This filter can't be reused in any case. (private variable) Stand alone: Creating a filter out side of a query subject, using the wizard. This can be reused. (Public variable)
FACTLESS FACT :
factless fact table is “a fact table that has no facts but captures the many-to-many relationship between dimension keys.”
Confirmed Dimension: A conformed dimension is a set of data attributes that have been physically referenced in multiple database tables using the same key value to refer to the same structure, attributes, domain values, definitions and concepts. A conformed dimension cuts across many facts. Dimensions are conformed when they are either exactly the same (including keys) or one is a perfect subset of the other. Most important, the row headers produced in two different answer sets from the same conformed dimension(s) must be able to match perfectly. Conformed dimensions are either identical or strict mathematical subsets of the most granular, detailed dimension. Dimension tables are not conformed if the attributes are labeled differently or contain different values. Conformed dimensions come in several different flavors. At the most basic level, conformed dimensions mean exactly the same thing with every possible fact table to which they are joined. The date dimension table connected to the sales facts is identical to the date dimension connected to the inventory facts.
Junk Dimension A Junk Dimension is a dimension table consisting of attributes that do not belong in the fact table or in any of the existing dimension tables. The nature of these attributes is usually text or various flags, e.g. non-generic comments or just simple yes/no or true/false indicators. These kinds of attributes are typically remaining when all the obvious dimensions in the business process have been identified and thus the designer is faced with the challenge of where to put these attributes that do not belong in the other dimensions.
Role Playing dimension : Dimensions are often recycled for multiple applications within the same database. For instance, a "Date" dimension can be used for "Date of Sale", as well as "Date of Delivery", or "Date of Hire". This is often referred to as a "role-playing dimension".
Slowly changing dimension SCD The most common types are I, II, and III. Type I This methodology overwrites old with new data, and therefore does not track historical data. The disadvantage of the Type I method is that there is no history in the data warehouse. It has the advantage however that it's easy to maintain. If you have calculated an aggregate table summarizing facts by state, it will need to be recalculated when the Supplier_State is changed. Type II This method tracks historical data by creating multiple records for a given natural key in the dimensional tables with separate surrogate keys and/or different version numbers. Unlimited history is preserved for each insert. Type III This method tracks changes using separate columns and preserves limited history. The Type III preserves limited history as it's limited to the number of columns designated for storing historical data. The original table structure in Type I and Type II is the same but Type III adds additional columns.

Cognos Report studio Objects

Difference between Query Calculation and layout calculation

Query Calculation

It is used to perform Data Scrubbing. Insert a query calculation into your report to add a new row or column with values that are based on a calculation. For example, you create a query calculation named Euros that converts dollars to euros by multiplying an existing dollar measure by a conversion rate. Euros can then be displayed to end users in a separate row or column.

Layout Calculation

Layout Calculation is used to provide run time information, but not used to perform any operation on the data. Create a layout calculation to add run-time information to your report, such as current date, current time, and user name. When creating layout calculations, only report functions are available to you in the expression editor. These functions are executed in the report layout, as opposed to the other functions which are executed in the query.

 

 

Difference between Group span & Level Span

Group Span:

In List Report when you have product line product type & product name as a query item. In list object product line & product type are grouped. Now you want to span product line as per product type (i.e. you want product line to repeat whenever new product type is listed beside it). You can click on product line & change the Group Span property to product type. This gives you the proper result.

Now you want to span product line as per product name (i.e. you want product line to repeat whenever new product name is listed beside it). In this case you have to first group the product name query item then & then you can change Group span property of the product line to product name. Because Group span property lists the query items which are grouped in the list.

Level Span:

In CrossTab Report when you have product line as parent node in row product type as child node of product line & product name as child node of product type. Now you want to span product line as per product type (i.e. you want product line to repeat whenever new product type is listed beside it). You dont have Group span property in CrossTab Ok? Here you can do some trick which is called Level span. You can add one more product type as child to product type & then cut product line from CrossTab. Then select Parent product type & change Source Type property to Data Item Value & Data Item Value property to product line. Now run the report you can see the product line level repeats whenever new product type is listed beside it. This is called a Level Span.

NOTE: Remember one more thing you can not do same kind of Level Span using dimensional model. You can do Level Span using relational model only.

 

Difference between Render Variable & Style variable

Render Variable: - Specify a variable based on which object can be conditionally rendered. Style variable is used to hide or show an object.

Style Variable: - Specify a variable based on which object can be conditionally styled. Style variable is used to change the style of an object, different report objects in different styles.

Example  for Style Variable
A report contains a list object, if u want to display every alternate row with particular color
in this case, go to query explorer....
1) create a data item with name running-count with function "running-count" on particular unique column
2) now create one more data item as mod  with function "mod" on that running-count data item.

    Select List and in properties pane. Select 'Properties' and select 'running-count' and 'mod' data items.
3)create a Boolean variable with expression mod=1
4)go to the page select List column Body style
5)In properties pane select Style Variable as Boolean variable 
6)click on YES variable and set its Foreground color as BLUE 
7)click on No variable and set its Foreground color as GREEN 
now run the report 

Example  for Render Variable
In case you want to see the  particular page in HTML or PDF or CSV format then 
1)Create 3 pages in your report 
2)Every page should contain some specific data
3)name these pages as HTML,PDF,CSV
4)create a String variable with 3 values as HTML ,PDF and CSV
5)now in string variable put expression as .....
case

when ReportOutput()='HTML' then 'HTML'
when ReportOutput()='PDF' then 'PDF'
when ReportOutput()='CSV' then 'CSV'
end
6)now go the page named HTML and select page object
7)in properties pane click on Render Variable ,select that string variable
8)check only HTML check box value for HTML page
9)repeat step No. 6 to step No.8 for remaining 2 pages.

 

 

Singleton

A query item that you can insert anywhere in the layout of your report where there is no query associated. When the report is run, the singleton object retrieves only the first row value for that query. Singletons are useful for adding boilerplate text to a report, such as a company name or address, to add overall calculations in a report, or to add multidimensional cell calculations in a report

 

IBM Business Intelligence Software & Its Core Capabilities

IBM Business Intelligence Software & Its Core Capabilities

Introduction

Business intelligence is defined as “mission critical” by many senior executives today. Organizations are pressured constantly to understand and react quickly to information. In addition, the complexity and volumes of data for all aspects of the environments in which organizations operate is increasing. Markets, regulatory environments, customer and supplier data, competitive information, and internal operational information all impact how data is viewed and interpreted.

The term 'Business Intelligence' was used as early as September, 1996, when a Gartner Group report said:

By 2000, Information Democracy will emerge in forward-thinking enterprises, with Business Intelligence information and applications available broadly to employees, consultants, customers, suppliers, and the public. The key to thriving in a competitive marketplace is staying ahead of the competition. Making sound business decisions based on accurate and current information takes more than intuition. Data analysis, reporting, and query tools can help business users wade through a sea of data to synthesize valuable information from it - today these tools collectively fall into a category called "Business Intelligence."

Normally, Business intelligence (BI) is seen as a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions. Business intelligence applications can be:

• Mission-critical and integral to an enterprise's operations or occasional to meet a special requirement
• Enterprise-wide or local to one division, department, or project
• Centrally initiated or driven by user demand

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence version 10.1 is the revolutionary new business intelligence release from IBM that breaks down the barriers to analytics. It is revolutionary because it expands traditional BI capabilities with planning, scenario modeling, real-time monitoring, and predictive analytics. These capabilities deliver power in an easy-to-use and unified experience that is collaboration and social networking enabled.

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence version 10.1 enables organizations to gain all the perspectives they need to increase performance by providing the following functions:

• Analytics that everyone can use to answer key business questions—sharpening individual skills and improving business outcomes
• Collective intelligence to connect people and insights to gain alignment—collapsing the time needed to align, decide, and act
• Actionable insight everywhere it is needed in real-time, mobile, and business processes that enable instant response to changing business conditions

 Built on a proven technology platform, IBM Cognos Business Intelligence version 10.1 is designed to upgrade seamlessly and cost-effectively scale for the broadest of deployments. It provides you and your organization the freedom to see more, to do more, and to make smart decisions that drive better business results.

Business Intelligence capabilities

1) Query & Reporting –

These capabilities for authoring reports, viewing reports and modifying reports and queries that meet all the needs of users, no matter where or how they work:

• Professional report authors can design, build and securely distribute multilingual reports to the enterprise.
• Business users can easily create their own reports on the fly or modify existing reports using trusted data without having to ask IT.
• IT administrators can deploy, manage and expand the reporting application from a central console that streamlines administrative tasks.
• The mobile workforce can access and interact with reports on mobile devices, in Microsoft Office applications, in embedded and in-process business intelligence and while disconnected.

2) Analysis –

Analysis capabilities meet the needs of all users in your organization with a single, intuitive workspace. With this workspace, everyone can:

• Access all the information—at all angles and perspectives—they need to drive informed decisions.
• Seamlessly transition to deeper analysis capabilities and perform complex analysis tasks quickly and easily to get to the “why” behind an event or action.
• Validate key information and drive business decisions by incorporating statistical evidence in reports.
• Drill-down into and filter real-time data and incorporate analysis of a broader range of alternative scenarios to build “what-if” projections.
• Deliver the power of predictive analytics into the hands of business users.

3) Scorecarding –

With scorecards, you can track performance based on key performance indicators (KPIs) to link corporate strategy to operational tactics. Scorecards enable you to set quantifiable goals for any time period and monitor progress on specific projects and activities. You can create strategy maps, impact diagrams and other elements and maintain metrics in a centralized data store to ensure consistent definitions.

Scorecards from IBM business intelligence software help you:

• Align strategy with operations.
• Communicate strategy and track your progress.
• Ensure accountability for performance.
• Share with more user communities.
• Enjoy simple deployment and administration.

4) Dashboarding –

With IBM business intelligence dashboard capabilities, you can:

• Analyze information and share the results to follow a train of thought or generate a unique perspective.
• Assemble and format all kinds of content by dragging-and-dropping, filtering, modifying and arranging layout, adding colors and text and personalizing widgets. Change display, add calculations, prompt, drill up and down and sort data with more advanced dashboard capabilities.
• Distribute dashboards and integrate them with IBM® Connections for improved collaboration and alignment.
• Access and interact with dashboards regardless of language or location with mobile applications.
• Schedule, burst and distribute professionally authored dashboards to a broad audience of consumers including those who need disconnected access to their dashboards.

5) Rich BI in Mobile applications –

Mobile apps for business intelligence make information available when and where it’s needed. Using IBM business intelligence mobile apps for Apple, BlackBerry and Android, you can interact with reports, analysis, dashboards and more on smart phones, tablets and notebook computers. And, the IBM business intelligence platform can help IT support these mobile apps and provide the same type of experience to everyone.

With IBM business intelligence capabilities provided in mobile apps, you can:

• Experience insight wherever you are through quick and simple access to business intelligence.
• Interact with information like never before in a rich, visual and interactive experience.
• Confidently and easily deploy relevant and reusable business intelligence to any device.

6) Disconnected BI

IBM Cognos® Active Report provides an interactive analytics experience in a self-contained BI application for browsing and exploring data offline. Mobile workers can take their data with them to discover opportunities and analyze trends even when they are nowhere near a network.

Explore information without having to rely on online connectivity. Access the business intelligence you need while offline for uninterrupted productivity. Provide business intelligence to individuals regardless of their location, situation or connectivity.

7) Statistics –

Including statistics with business reporting is critical for facilitating fact-based decision-making. This can be a challenge because it often requires using different—and sometimes disconnected—software. You need to be able to incorporate statistics into core business reporting without having to struggle with multiple tools, the overhead of exporting data to different systems or the complexities of bringing results back together in a single output.

IBM business intelligence software includes statistics capabilities that simplify the process of incorporating statistical results with core business reporting, reducing the time it takes to analyze data and prepare business presentations based on that analysis. You can validate business information and drive business decisions by adding statistical evidence to reports that can be delivered easily to broader business communities.

 8) Real-time Monitoring –

Real-time monitoring includes these features:

• Drill-down capabilities and exception management. Users can quickly determine the root cause of an issue.
• Business-defined alerts. Users can set watch points, collaborate and alert all parties to sudden issues to address exceptions based on business rules.
• Robust self-service query, reporting and analysis. Users can create and author reports, query any data source and analyze information on their own with a flexible, drag-and-drop report authoring environment.
• Simplified administration. Administrators have a central place to set up data sources and analytic models to present current information, historical data or aggregated views.
• Centralized security. User, group and role-based access provides access control to events, cubes, views, dimensions, rules, alerts, portlets and dashboards.

9) Collaboration –

With built-in collaboration and social networking, you can harness the collective intelligence of your organization to connect people and insights and gain alignment in your organization and with key stakeholders. IBM business intelligence software provides built-in collaboration and social networking capabilities to fuel the exchange of ideas and knowledge that naturally occurs in decision-making processes today.

Establish decision networks and expand the reach and impact of information
Share insights and solicit ideas with a broad set of social networking capabilities provided by IBM® Connections. Integrated access to blogs, wikis and message boards enable you to expand the reach and impact of your information and gather input from different perspectives.

Provide transparency and accountability to ensure alignment and consensus
Raise the value of your business intelligence by increasing user understanding of the information it contains. IBM business intelligence software provides a broad set of report-level features to help you better describe your data, capture insight about it and prescribe how to use it.

Communicate and coordinate tasks to engage the right people at the right time
Put better decisions into action with workflow and task management capabilities that connect people with insights and coordinate decisions with activities in a seamless, closed-loop environment. Assign ownership, manage initiatives and track projects.

10) Planning and budgets –

For the best business outcomes, your company needs to plan and forecast effectively. You must also get the right information to the right people in the form they need it—and be able to make changes quickly. For most companies, regardless of size or industry, the corporate budgeting, forecasting and planning processes present a formidable challenge. Finance professionals and line managers alike most often describe annual planning and budgets as  burdensome and time-consuming. 

IBM enterprise planning and financial analytics capabilities support a full range of business requirements. From high-performance, on-demand customer and profitability analysis and flexible modeling to enterprise contribution, these planning and budgeting solutions meet the needs of manufacturing, sales and service, finance, human resources, marketing and more. You can rapidly create, compare and assess budgets, plans, business scenarios, conditions, drivers, rates and assumptions and then evaluate what-if scenarios critical to forecasting future performance.

In short, with Cognos Business Intelligence software from IBM, you can:

• Equip users with what they need to explore information freely, analyze key facts, collaborate to gain alignment with key stakeholders and make decisions with confidence for better business outcomes.
• Provide quick access to facts with reports, analysis, dashboards, scorecards, planning and budgets, real-time information, statistics and the flexibility to manage information for more informed decisions.
• Integrate the results of “what-if” analysis modeling and predictive analytics into your unified workspace to view possible future outcomes alongside current and historical data.
• Support where users need to work with business intelligence capabilities for the office and desktop, on mobile devices, online and offline.
• Meet different analytics needs throughout your business with solutions that are integrated and right-sized for individuals, workgroups or midsize businesses and large organizations or enterprises.
• Implement a highly scalable and extensible solution that can adapt to the changing needs of IT and the business with flexible deployment options that include the cloud, mainframes and data warehousing appliances.
• Start addressing your most pressing needs with the confidence that you can grow your solution over time to meet future requirements with the integrated Cognos 10 family of products.

You can download IBM Cognos BI Developer Edition (30 days trial) from below link -

http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/search.jsp?pn=Cognos+Business+Intelligence+Developer+Edition

You are also encouraged to view demo videos to understand core Cognos BI functionalities using below link - 

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/business-intelligence/trials-demos.html

IBM Business Intelligence Software & Its Capabilities

IBM Cognos 10 BI: Components & User Interfaces

IBM Cognos BI includes web-based and Windows-based user interfaces that provide a business intelligence experience that is focused upon the needs of different users. Here we would discuss essential tools & user interfaces of Cognos 10 which we can use to implement and use BI.

In below figure, We can see different components and how they are fitting in. The top most layer, where we can see Cognos Connection, Administrator, Business Insight and different studios. They all are web-based and end-user needs not to install any client side software if he has latest web browser installed.

Bottom layer is basically data layer where you may have homogenous or heterogeneous database systems. Data may be relational or multi-dimentional. On top of it, we can see three modeling tools there - Framework Manager, Transformer and Metric Designer. All of them are client based installation.

We’ll maintain the flow of components from top to bottom as shown in below BI components figure.

Lets start with Welcome Screen. From this interface you can open different interfaces as per your requirement.

  

IBM Cognos Connection

IBM Cognos Connection is the portal to IBM Cognos software. IBM Cognos Connection provides a single access point to all corporate data available in IBM Cognos software.  Cognos Connection is -

• Customizable portal interface to all Cognos 10 content (reports, analyses, queries, agents, metrics, and packages)

–        Public Folders are shared and secured by user or group

–        My Folders is private

• Launching point for different capabilities based on permissions

–        Studios, administrative functions

• Used to set preferences

–        Language, run options, home page

• Access and personalize content

–        Access and view content, live or saved output versions

–        Open the report for editing

–        Personalize the view by setting prompt values, output format, language

–        Schedule the report to be run in the future or at recurring intervals

 IBM Cognos Administration

Cognos Administration is a central management interface that contains the administrative tasks for Cognos BI. It provides easy access to the overall management of the IBM Cognos environment and is accessible through Cognos Connection. Cognos Administration is organized into three sections:

• Status

Use the links in this section to monitor activities, server status, and system metrics, and change some system settings.

• Security

Use the links in this section to define users, groups, and roles for security purposes, configure capabilities for the interfaces and studios, and set properties for the user interface profiles (professional and express) that are used in Report Studio.

• Configuration

Use the links in this section to set up data source connections, deploy IBM Cognos BI content from one content store to another, create distribution and contact lists, add printers, set styles, manage portlets and portal layout, start or stop dispatchers and services, and change system settings.

You can also perform the following administrative tasks:

• automating tasks
• setting up your environment and configuring your database for multilingual reporting
• installing fonts
• setting up printers
• configuring web browsers
• allowing user access to Series 7 reports from IBM Cognos Connection
• restricting access to IBM Cognos software

 Aside from the typical administrative tasks, you can also customize the appearance and functionality of different IBM Cognos components.

IBM Cognos Configuration

Use IBM Cognos Configuration

• to set the initial configuration of IBM Cognos components after you install them
• to configure IBM Cognos components if you want to change a property value or you add components to your environment
• to start or stop the service for an IBM Cognos component on the local computer

You can run IBM Cognos Configuration in either interactive or silent mode. In interactive mode, you use a graphical user interface to configure the IBM Cognos component. In silent mode, the tool runs in the background and requires no interaction from you as part of an unattended installation.

If you change the value of a property, you must save the configuration and then restart the IBM Cognos service to apply the new settings to your computer.

For distributed installations, ensure that you configured all computers where you installed Content Manager before you change default configuration settings on other IBM Cognos computers. For example, you can

• change the default user and password for Cognos Content Database
• change a URI
• configure cryptographic settings
• configure IBM Cognos components to use IBM Cognos Application Firewall
• configure temporary file properties
• configure the gateway to use a namespace
• Enable and Disable Services
• configure fonts
• configure font support for Simplified Chinese
• change the default font for reports
• save report output to a file system
• change the notification database

After you change the default behavior of IBM Cognos components to better suit your IBM Cognos environment, you can configure Portal Services, configure an authentication provider, or test the installation Test the Installation and Configuration.

1) IBM Cognos Business Insight

IBM Cognos Business Insight is a Web-based tool that allows you to use IBM Cognos content and external data sources to build sophisticated interactive dashboards that provide insight and facilitate collaborative decision making.

You can view and open favorite dashboards and reports, manipulate the content in the dashboards, and email your dashboards. You can also use comments and activities for collaborative decision making and use social software such as IBM Lotus® Connections for collaborative decision making.

Create dashboards with Business Insight to give business users in your organization an integrated Business Intelligence experience that includes collaborative decision making. A dashboard allows users to quickly complete a wide variety of tasks such as viewing and interacting with reports and collaborating and sharing information.

When you create an interactive dashboard, you are assembling IBM Cognos content. You can also add content from HTML and text sources.

IBM Business Insight is -

• Interactive, self-service workspace
• Assemble and share dashboards

–        Assemble content for a personal or shared dashboard without IT intervention

–        Arrange elements in an intuitive, WYSIWYG interface

• Interact with information for greater understanding

–        Personalize the look and feel with easy formatting options

–        Create calculations

–        Select alternate visualizations

–        Conduct further analysis in context

–        Examine data lineage

• Share and collaborate on key information

–        Add comments to clarify and question

–        Search for existing content and begin authoring in context

IBM Cognos Business Insight Advanced

IBM Cognos Business Insight Advanced provides a single, integrated environment for advanced business users who need to do more than consume reports and dashboards that are authored for them. This solution does not require you to use different user interfaces depending on whether the data is dimensional or relational and whether your primary task is report authoring or data exploration. You can use it to author new reports on relational or dimensional data. With Business Insight Advanced, you can create and format a wide variety of reports, including lists, cross tabs, charts, and financial statement style reports. In addition, you can use it for OLAP exploration and can mix exploration and authoring activities seamlessly without switching interfaces or modes.

Business Insight Advanced is -

• Web-based, drag-and-drop content authoring interface designed for business users
  • Relational or dimensional data
  • Multiple data layouts and visualizations
  • Styles and formatting
  • Format, layout, and distribution
  • Incorporate external data
• Content can be run as standalone report or incorporated into Business Insight workspace
• Leveraged as starting point for further enhancement by professional authors as needed

IBM Cognos Report Studio

IBM Cognos Report Studio is a robust report design and authoring tool. Using IBM Cognos Report Studio, report authors can create, edit, and distribute a wide range of professional reports. You can author entire range of enterprise reports with relational or dimensional data sources, and show data in lists, crosstabs, and various kinds of charts. You can write a report once and distribute it to many users in multiple languages and formats.

Main features are -

• Web-based professional report authoring environment
• Create new reports or enhance content created by business users
• Provides fine-grain control over layout formatting and presentation for production ready formatting
• Additional capabilities for the professional author

–        Extend reports with interactive maps and prompts

–        Multiple logical pages for varied content

–        Interactive tables of contents

–        Create offline Active Reports

–        Incorporate statistical analysis

• Any report can be used as a template. You simply create and format a report and then use it as your starting point for all other reports, leaving the original report unchanged. A report intended to be used as a template usually does not contain data so that the report can be used with multiple packages. You can start from numerous pre-defined templates, or blank report as shown below.

Your users can interact with the reports you distribute if you add prompts or enable drill-through access to another report, or both.  By answering prompts when a report is run, your users customize the contents of the report to meet their information needs. One authored report can then meet the requirements of many users. By enabling drill-through access to another report, your users can navigate from one report to the next.

IBM Cognos Query Studio

Using IBM Cognos Query Studio, users with little or no training can quickly design, create, and save ad-hoc queries and reports to meet reporting needs that are not covered by the standard, professional reports created in IBM Cognos Report Studio. In Query Studio, you can

• view data

Connect to a data source to view data in a tree hierarchy. Expand the query subjects to see query item details.

• create reports

Use the data source to create reports, which you can save and reuse. You can also create a new report by opening an existing report, changing it, and saving it using another name.

• change the appearance of reports

Improve the layout of your report. For example, you can create a chart, add a title, specify text and border styles, or reorder columns for easy comparison.

• work with data in a report

Use filters, summaries, and calculations to compare and analyze data. Drill up and drill down to view related information.

IBM Cognos Analysis Studio

With Analysis Studio, users can explore and analyze data from different dimensions of their business. Users can also compare data to spot trends or anomalies in performance. Analysis Studio provides access to dimensional, online analytical processing (OLAP), and dimensionally modeled relational data sources. Analyses created in Analysis Studio can be opened in IBM Cognos Report Studio and used to build professional reports.

Use the interactive drag-and-drop environment in Analysis Studio to explore and analyze data to find answers to business questions.

Using Analysis Studio, you can –

● find and focus on items that are important to your business

● understand trends and anomalies

● compare data, such as details to summaries, or actual results to budgeted results

● assess performance by focusing on the best or worst results

● establish relative importance using calculations such as growth or rank

● share your findings with others

Like IBM Cognos Series 7 PowerPlay Web, Analysis Studio helps you answer business questions quickly and easily. Analysis Studio supports the same drill up and down behavior and drag-and-drop control as PowerPlay Web, while addressing demands for more effective ways to analyze large amounts of data

IBM Cognos Event Studio

In Event Studio, you set up agents to monitor your data and perform tasks when business events or exceptional conditions occur in your data. When an event occurs, people are alerted to take action. Agents can publish details to the portal, deliver alerts by email, run and distribute reports based on events, and monitor the status of events. For example, a support call from a key customer or the cancellation of a large order might trigger an event, sending an email to the appropriate people.

Use Event Studio to notify decision-makers in your organization of events as they happen, so that they can make timely and effective decisions. You create agents that monitor your organization’s data to detect occurrences of business events. An event is a situation that can affect the success of your business. An event is identified when specific items in your data achieve significant values. Specify the event condition, or a change in data, that is important to you. When an agent detects an event, it can perform tasks, such as sending an e-mail, adding information to the portal, and running reports.

The IBM Cognos Platform includes a new service to support enhanced event management functionality called the Human Task Service. This service is based upon an open specification called WS-Human Tasks. IBM Cognos BI includes the following types of human tasks that you can see in the task inbox:

• Approval requests
• Ad-hoc tasks
• Notification requests

You can create tasks from the following components:

• IBM Cognos Event Studio (notification requests and approval requests)
• The My Inbox area of IBM Cognos Connection (notification requests and ad-hoc tasks)
• A watch rule set up for a report (notification requests only)

IBM Cognos Metric Studio & Designer

Use Metric Studio to create a customized scorecarding environment to monitor and analyze metrics and projects throughout your organization. Metric Studio helps you translate your organization’s strategy into relevant, measurable goals that align each employee's actions with a strategic plan.

A rich scorecarding environment shows you quickly where your organization is successful and where it needs improvement. Metric Studio tracks performance against targets and indicates the current status of the business so that decision makers at every level of the organization can react and plan. Use the flexibility of Metric Studio to model metrics and their relationships based on any standard or proprietary scorecarding and management methodology that you already use.

Metric Designer is the IBM Cognos 8 modeling tool used to create extracts for use in IBM Cognos scorecarding applications. Extracts are used to map and transfer information from existing metadata sources such as Framework Manager and Impromptu Query Definition (.iqd) files.

If IBM Cognos Metric Studio is installed and configured as part of your IBM Cognos BI environment, you can navigate to Metric Studio content in the Content tab and add the following Metric Studio content to a dashboard:

1. Watch lists
2. Scorecards
3. Strategies
4. Metric types
5. Individual metrics

When you add an individual metric to the dashboard, historical data for the metric displays in a form of a bar chart. For any other IBM Cognos Metric Studio content that you add, the content displays as a list of metrics for the selected item. Each metric in the list has a hyperlink that opens the individual metric in Metric Studio.

IBM Cognos Framework Manager

IBM Cognos Framework Manager is the IBM Cognos BI modeling tool for creating and managing business related metadata for use in IBM Cognos BI analysis and reporting. Metadata is published for use by reporting tools as a package, providing a single, integrated business view of any number of heterogeneous data sources.

Framework Manager can rapidly create relational and dimensional models (Dimensionally Modeled Relational) through a guided workflow-driven modeling process, check the execution path of the queries, define filters, and configure data multi-language support and security filters.

To enhance the business view of the model, you can use Framework Manager to:

–        model for predictable results (star schema)

–        model for OLAP-style queries (model dimensionally)

–        create one or more business views

–        add calculations

–        create and apply filters

–        add prompts

–        set row level security

IBM Cognos Transformer

Transformer is a proven and relatively simple tool for modeling dimensional hierarchies and levels for PowerCubes.

Transformer is a data modeling tool designed for use with IBM Cognos 8 version 8.3 and subsequent releases. You use this component to create a model, a business presentation of the information in one or more data sources. After you choose a supported product locale (language), add dimensional metadata, specify the measures (performance indicators), and apply custom views, you can create PowerCubes based on this model. You can deploy these cubes to support OLAP reporting and analysis.

A model can contain any number of regular or calculated measures, together with logical groupings that use measure folders. A regular measure is numeric data in a transactional data source. A calculated measure is new numeric data that is derived from other measures, functions, and constants, such as Profit, which is calculated from the measures Revenue and Cost. A measure folder can group existing measures into a logical collection and, if needed, can be assigned a calculated value itself.

IBM Cognos Map Manager

In a map that contains region layers, you can now create new region layers from existing ones using Map Manager. Each new region within the new layer is made up of one or more complete regions from the existing region layer.

As the report author, you can use this new feature to customize maps when the regions in the supplied maps do not correspond to the way information is managed and reported on. For example, your Sales Territories may not match the States layer. You can create a Sales Region Layer with a region such as Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and so on). As a result, you avoid having to create a new map layer in MapInfo, a task requiring additional knowledge as well as licensing of the original MapInfo data.

It is not, however, possible to use portions of one region to form a new region. For example, you can combine the state regions of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to form a sales region, but you cannot use portions of any region, such as cities, to form a new region. Use Map Manager to load an existing IBM Cognos map file, define the new region layer, and then save the map with the new layer.

Install IBM® Cognos® Map Manager if you want to -

● convert maps from non IBM sources

● assign alternate names for map features

● assign alternate languages for map features