IBM Cognos Analytics

Last updated
IBM Cognos Analytics
Developer(s) IBM
Stable release
12.0.0 / June 2023;8 months ago (2023-06)
Operating system Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX
Platform Cross-platform software
Available inMulti-lingual
Type Business intelligence
Data visualization
Analytics
License Proprietary
Website www.ibm.com/products/cognos-analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson (aka Cognos Analytics, and formerly known as IBM Cognos Business Intelligence) is a web-based integrated business intelligence suite by IBM. It provides a toolset for reporting, analytics, scorecarding, and monitoring of events and metrics. The software consists of several components designed to meet the different information requirements in a company. IBM Cognos Analytics has components such as IBM Cognos Framework Manager, IBM Cognos Cube Designer, IBM Cognos Transformer.

Contents

Basic components

The elements described below are web-based components that can be accessed from most popular browsers (IBM Cognos specifically supports Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer).

Cognos Connection

Cognos Connection is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI. It is the starting point for access to all functions provided with the suite. Using this portal, content can be searched in the form of reports, scorecards, and agents, it can be managed, structured, and displayed. In addition, the portal is used for multiple functions, for example to schedule and distribute reports, for creating tasks, administering the server, and the access permissions to content available to different users. You can also create shortcuts, URLs, and pages.

Query Studio

Query Studio allows simple queries and self-service reports to answer basic business questions. The report layout can be customized and data can be filtered and sorted. Formatting and creation of diagrams is also supported. [1]

Report Studio

The Report Studio is used to create management reports. It offers two different modes: The professional authoring mode enables users to access the full range of Report Studio functionality. In this mode, users can create any type of report, including charts, maps, lists, and repeat functions. In professional authoring mode all types of Data (relational or multidimensional) can be used, but dynamic data can not be displayed. [1]

The express authoring mode has a simpler user interface, designed for non-technical users. It enables them to create traditional financial or management reports in a more focused user interface. In contrast to the professional authoring mode, the express authoring mode allows the use of dynamic data. [1]

Analysis Studio

Drill-up and drill-down as example OLAP-functionalities OLAP drill up&down.png
Drill-up and drill-down as example OLAP-functionalities

Users can create analyses of large data sources and search for background information about an event or action. Multidimensional analysis allows identifying trends and understanding of anomalies or deviations, which are not obvious in other types of reports. Drag-and-drop features, elements and key performance indicators can be included in the analysis, rows and columns can be switched, OLAP-functionalities [2] [3] like drill-up and drill-down can be used to get a deeper understanding about the sources of the information used in the analysis.

Event Studio

The Event Studio is a notification tool that informs about events within the enterprise in real time. Therefore, agents can be created to detect the occurrence of business events or exceptional circumstances, based on the change of specified event- or data conditions. A notification may be served by sending an e-mail, its publication in the portal, or by triggering reports. This can be used to handle failure with notification. It is very robust in nature.

Workspace

IBM Cognos Workspace (formerly introduced in version 10.1 as IBM Cognos Business Insight and renamed in version 10.2.0) is a web-based interface that allows business users to use existing IBM Cognos content (report objects) to build interactive workspaces for insight and collaboration.

Workspace Advanced

IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced (formerly introduced in version 10.1 as IBM Cognos Business Insight Advanced and renamed in version 10.2.0) is a web-based interface that allows business users to author/create reports and analyze information.

Windows-based components

Additional components

Go! Office

The Go! Office component lets users work with IBM Cognos content in their familiar Microsoft Office environment. The component provides access to all IBM Cognos Report contents, including data, metadata, headers and footers, and diagrams. Users can use predefined reports or create new content with Query Studio, Analysis Studio or Report Studio. By importing content into Microsoft Excel users can use the formatting, calculation, and presentation features. The created documents can then be imported using Cognos Connection, published, and made available for other users.

In Cognos Connection, you can do a full-text search for content contained in reports, analyses, dashboards, metric information, and events. When searching, an index of the prompts, titles, headings, column names, row names, data elements, and other important fields is used as a base. The full-text search in IBM Cognos Go! Search is related to the search in regular search engines such as Google. Users can search operators such as +, - or use "" (quotation marks) to change the default behavior of search queries with multiple words. Search terms are not case sensitive, word, and spelling variants are included in the results. You can also search for a specific type of entry, such as an agent. The search results are sorted in descending order, the entry with the greatest amount of relevant metadata is displayed at the top of the list. In Analysis Studio, Query Studio and IBM Cognos Viewer, you can either perform a full-text search, as also search for content related to the data of the current view. [4]

Go! Dashboards

With IBM Cognos Go! Dashboard, interactive dashboards containing IBM Cognos content and external data sources can be created to fit the information needs of an individual user.

The following items can be added to a dashboard:
Report objects, they are displayed in a Cognos Viewer portlet. Report parts such as lists, crosstabs, and charts are displayed in interactive portlets. Lists or crosstabs can be displayed as a chart and vice versa. Content can be shown or hidden dynamically by the use of sliders and checkboxes. The Cognos Search portlet allows searching for published content. In addition, Web links, Web pages, RSS feeds, and images can be displayed on the dashboard. [5]

The user interface has two modes: In the interactive mode, existing dashboards are viewed and interacted with, creating and editing of dashboards can be done in assembly mode. [5]

Business Applications

According to an IBM publication from 2006, the NYPD uses Cognos systems for the "Real Time Crime Center" to provide real time visualizations of CompStat crime data. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information ; often, the user can configure which ones to display. Variants of portals include mashups and intranet dashboards for executives and managers. The extent to which content is displayed in a "uniform way" may depend on the intended user and the intended purpose, as well as the diversity of the content. Very often design emphasis is on a certain "metaphor" for configuring and customizing the presentation of the content and the chosen implementation framework or code libraries. In addition, the role of the user in an organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the portal configuration.

Cognos Incorporated was an Ottawa, Ontario-based company making business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries until being acquired by IBM on January 31, 2008. While no longer an independent company, the Cognos name continues to be applied to IBM's line of business intelligence and performance management products.

Business software is any software or set of computer programs used by business users to perform various business functions. These business applications are used to increase productivity, measure productivity, and perform other business functions accurately.

The following tables compare general and technical information for many wiki software packages.

Essbase is a multidimensional database management system (MDBMS) that provides a platform upon which to build analytic applications. Essbase began as a product from Arbor Software, which merged with Hyperion Software in 1998. Oracle Corporation acquired Hyperion Solutions Corporation in 2007. Until late 2005 IBM also marketed an OEM version of Essbase as DB2 OLAP Server.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyperion Solutions</span> American software company

Hyperion Solutions Corporation was a software company located in Santa Clara, California, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007. Many of its products were targeted at the business intelligence (BI) and business performance management markets, and as of 2013 were developed and sold as Oracle Hyperion products. Hyperion Solutions was formed from the merger of Hyperion Software and Arbor Software in 1998.

IBM Planning Analytics powered by TM1 is a business performance management software suite designed to implement collaborative planning, budgeting and forecasting solutions, interactive "what-if" analyses, as well as analytical and reporting applications.

A Java Portlet Specification (JSR) defines a contract between portlets and their containers; they provides a convenient programming model for Java portlet developers.

A mashup, in web development, is a web page or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. For example, a user could combine the addresses and photographs of their library branches with a Google map to create a map mashup. The term implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open application programming interfaces and data sources to produce enriched results that were not necessarily the original reason for producing the raw source data. The term mashup originally comes from creating something by combining elements from two or more sources.

Plumtree Software is a former software company founded in 1996 by product managers and engineers from Oracle and Informix with funding from Sequoia Capital. The company was a pioneer of extending the portal concept popularized by Yahoo! from the web to enterprise computing. BEA Systems acquired Plumtree on October 20, 2005, and Oracle subsequently acquired BEA. Plumtree's former portal product continues as part of Oracle's product line.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">System Architect</span> Enterprise architecture tool

Unicom System Architect is an enterprise architecture tool that is used by the business and technology departments of corporations and government agencies to model their business operations and the systems, applications, and databases that support them. System Architect is used to build architectures using various frameworks including TOGAF, ArchiMate, DoDAF, MODAF, NAF and standard method notations such as sysML, UML, BPMN, and relational data modeling. System Architect is developed by UNICOM Systems, a division of UNICOM Global, a United States-based company.

Business intelligence software is a type of application software designed to retrieve, analyze, transform and report data for business intelligence. The applications generally read data that has been previously stored, often - though not necessarily - in a data warehouse or data mart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dashboard (business)</span> Aggregate business progress report

In business computer information systems, a dashboard is a type of graphical user interface which often provides at-a-glance views of key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to a particular objective or business process. In other usage, "dashboard" is another name for "progress report" or "report" and considered a form of data visualization. In providing this overview, business owners can save time and improve their decision making by utilizing dashboards.

An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP), is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries in a manner similar to the more general web portals. Enterprise portals provide a secure unified access point, often in the form of a web-based user interface, and are designed to aggregate and personalize information through application-specific portlets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SharePoint</span> Web application platform

SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft 365. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, although it is also used for sharing information through an intranet, implementing internal applications, and for implementing business processes.

Cognos ReportNet (CRN) was a web-based software product for creating and managing ad hoc and custom-made reports. ReportNet was developed by the Ottawa-based company Cognos (formerly Cognos Incorporated), an IBM company. The web-based reporting tool was launched in September 2003. Since IBM's acquisition of Cognos, ReportNet has been renamed IBM Cognos ReportNet like all other Cognos products.

ZK is an open-source Ajax Web application framework, written in Java, that enables creation of graphical user interfaces for Web applications with little required programming knowledge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XLCubed</span>

XLCubed is a business intelligence software and consulting services company. Established in 2001, XLCubed develops business intelligence software and provides business intelligence and performance management consulting services. The company is privately held and based out of the United Kingdom in the Thames Valley IT corridor.

The functional database model is used to support analytics applications such as financial planning and performance management. The functional database model, or the functional model for short, is different from but complementary to the relational model. The functional model is also distinct from other similarly named concepts, including the DAPLEX functional database model and functional language databases.

Microsoft Power BI is an interactive data visualization software product developed by Microsoft with a primary focus on business intelligence. It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform. Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn various sources of data into static and interactive data visualizations. Data may be input by reading directly from a database, webpage, PDF, or structured files such as spreadsheets, CSV, XML, JSON, XLSX, and SharePoint.

References

  1. 1 2 3 IBM Cognos 8 Mainly this document for Documentation,bm p.10 , (04.04.2011)
  2. Hannig Uwe (2008), Vom Data Warehouse zum Corporate Performance Management, p.86
  3. Lusti (2002), Data Warehouse und Data Mining, pp.157
  4. IBM Go! Search Documentation, p.59 ,(04.04.2011)
  5. 1 2 IBM Go! Dashboard Documentation, p. 7 ,(25.04.2011)
  6. "NYPD changes the crime control equation by transforming the way it uses information", IBM Corporation, Global Solution Sales New Orchard Road Armonk, NY 10504 U.S.A., 2006. Retrieved on 8 June 2019.