Cognos 11

Lesson 01: Introduction to

Cognos
Module Objectives :

1. Why Reporting?
2. Why Cognos Analytics?
3. Cognos 8/10 and 11 Comparison
4. Cognos Analytics Self Service capability
5. Cognos Analytics - Three tier Architecture
6. User Interfaces
7. Web-based User Interfaces
8. Tier 1 Web Server: Cognos Analytics Gateways
9. Tier 2 Application: Cognos Analytics Servers
10. Tier 3 Data: Content Providers
11. Accessing Cognos Analytics

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Why Reporting?

 Business Intelligence (BI) applications enable businesses to gather, store,

analyze, integrate, and present business data.
Reporting and Analysis of BI data enables businesses to make better and
Better Decision Making efficient decisions.

Provides historical, current and future business operations data that enable
Efficient Management to manage businesses efficiently.

Quality Data BI applications use data stored in a data warehouse or data mart..

Software
Software elements
elements support
support the
the use
use of
of this
this information
information by
by assisting
assisting in
in the
the
Software Element Support extraction, analysis, and reporting of information.
extraction, analysis, and reporting of information.

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Why Cognos Analytics?

 Introduction
 IBM Cognos Analytics is a complete enterprise business intelligence solution with a range
of BI capabilities.
 Enables users to author, share, and use reports that retrieve data from all enterprise
sources which helps to take efficient business decisions
 Use reports, analysis, dashboards and scorecards to monitor business performance,
analyze trends and measure results.
 Easy to deploy and manage due to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
 Scalability to handle a large number of users.
 Modular deployment enables you to meet immediate user requirements and expand or
modify as needed.

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Why Cognos Analytics? - Features and Benefits

Dashboards
Reporting Analysis Business dashboards
Provides access to a
complete list of self-serve
Enables the guided
exploration of information that
communicate complex
information quickly. They
Scorecarding
report types, is adaptable to pertains to all dimensions of translate information from Enables you to align your
any data source and operates your business, regardless of your various corporate teams and tactics with
from a single metadata layer where the data is stored. systems and data into visually strategy, communicate goals
for a variety of benefits such Analyze and report against rich presentations using consistently, and monitor
as multilingual reporting, ad online analytical processing gauges, maps, charts and performance against targets.
hoc query, and scheduling (OLAP) and dimensionally other graphical elements to
and bursting. aware relational sources. show multiple results
together.

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Cognos Analytics Self Service capability

 Basic data modeling, coupled with an updated look and feel

 Create an attractive dashboard in minutes
 As data is dragged onto the canvas, Cognos selects a visualization to best
represent it
 Automatically linking of a filter across the object
 The graphs and tables are laid out on a choice of grids which enhances
the visual appeal without any additional effort by users

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Cognos Analytics - Three tier Architecture

The Cognos Analytics BI architecture consists of the following features:

 Single, open Application Program Interface (API) founded on SOAP and
XML.
 Enables integration with Microsoft Office, Business Performance
Management (BPM) solutions, enterprise search capabilities, and other
applications.
 Consistent, zero foot print web based user interface.
 Supports leading Relational Databases as well as OLAP.
 Ensures dynamic load balancing.
 Cognos can be customized and is compatible with third party product.
 Supports multilingual reporting.

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IBM Cognos Analytics - Three tier Architecture

FRAMEW
BUSINES BUSINESS
REPORT
METRIC
ORK OTHER WINDOWS
S INSIGHT STUDIO
INSIGHT ADVANCED
STUDIO MANAGE STUDIOS AND WEB
R
BASED
INTERFACES
NETWORK FIREWALL

WEB
WEB GATEWAY
GATEWAY TIER 1: WEB
SERVER

NETWORK FIREWALL

COGNOS
COGNOS ACCESS
ACCESS CONTENT
CONTENT
LDAP MANAGER MANAGER
MANAGER MANAGER
TIER 2:
DISPATCHER
DISPATCHER APPLICATION

NETWORK FIREWALL

CONTENT METRIC TIER 3: DATA

QUERY
STORE STORE DATABASE

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IBM Cognos Analytics- User Interfaces

• Web portal provided with Cognos Analytics where users have a single point of access
Cognos Connection to corporate data. Users can query, analyze and organize data, create reports,
scorecards and events

• Web-based tool enabling report authors to create, edit, and distribute a wide range of
Cognos Analytics professional reports. It can also edit or modify reports created in Query Studio or
Analysis Studio.

• Web-based tool for ad-hoc reporting enabling users with little experience in Cognos to
Query Studio quickly design, create and save reports to meet reporting requirements not covered by
the standard, professional reports created in Report Studio.

• Web-based tool enabling users to explore, analyze, and compare dimensional data. It
Analysis Studio provides access to dimensional, Online Analytical Processing(OLAP), and
dimensionally modeled relational data sources.

• Web-based tool to create agents to monitor data and perform tasks when business
Event Studio events or exceptional conditions occur in your data. When an event occurs, users are
alerted to take action.

• Windows based modeling tool to create and manage business related metadata for
Framework Manager analysis and reporting. It provides a single, integrated business view of any number of
heterogeneous data sources.

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IBM Cognos Analytics BI Architecture

Cognos  Tier 1: Web Server & Gateways

Analytics User  Tier 1 consists of a Web Server and Gateways through which provides the
Interface user session connectivity with various BI applications.
• Gateway: It is an extension of the Web Server program that transfers
information from one server to another.
Web server & • Web communication in Cognos Analytics occurs through Gateways, which
Gateway Tier resides on one or more Web Servers.
 The following functionality occurs when Cognos Analytics
gateway receives a request:
Application Tier  Encrypts passwords to ensure security.
 Extracts information required to submit the request to a Cognos Analytics
server and attaches environment variables for the Web server.
 Adds a default namespace to the request to ensure that the server
Data Tier authenticates the user in the current namespace.
 Transfers requests to a Cognos Analytics dispatcher for processing.
 Cognos Analytics supports CGI, ISAPI, Apache_Mod and
Servlets as gateways.

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IBM Cognos Analytics BI Architecture

Cognos Analytics Tier 2: Cognos Application Servers

User Interface  Tier 2 consists of various components, such as, a
Dispatcher, Content manager and Services.
 The Cognos Analytics Applications tier can be configured on one or more
Web server &
Cognos Analytics Servers. A Cognos Analytics Server runs requests,
Gateway Tier such as reports, data analysis and queries that are received through a
gateway. A Cognos Analytics server also renders the Cognos
Connection and Metric Studio interfaces.
 Each Cognos Analytics Application Tier includes the
Application Tier following:
 Dispatcher that performs load balancing of requests at the application
tier. It is a light weight java servlet that managers application services.
 Report Server consists of the report or query service which is mainly
responsible for application tier processing.
Data Tier  Content Manager which manages storage of the application data such
as packages, report specification, dashboards, server configuration
settings, security settings and configuration, metrics and report output

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IBM Cognos Analytics BI Architecture

Cognos Analytics Tier 3: Data Tier

User Interface  Tier 3 consists of Content store, Data sources and Metric
store
 Content store: A relational database that stores data required by
Web server & Cognos Analytics to operate, such as, report specifications,
Gateway Tier published models, and packages that contain them; connection
information for data sources; information about the external
namespace, and the Cognos namespace itself; and information
about scheduling and bursting reports.
Application Tier  Data sources: These are relational databases, dimensional
cubes, files, or other physical data stores that can be accessed
through Cognos Analytics. Application Tier Components use
data source connections to access data sources.
 Metric store: A Relational database that contains content for
Data Tier metric packages. A metric store also contains Metric Studio
settings, such as user preferences.

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12
Accessing IBM Cognos Analytics

 IBM Cognos Homepage - http://10.74.161.177:9300/bi/v1/disp

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Cognos Analytics Workflow

Plan Manage Model Author Consume

Administer Server & Reports Setup & Maintain Security

Plan for implementation Framework Manager Projects

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Cognos 8/10 and 11 Comparison

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Q&A

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 Thank You

Review Date 14-July-2016

Version 1.0

Next Review Due 14-July-2017

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