Cognos 8 Business Intelligence applications overview
Cognos 8 Business Intelligence combines the features of all previous products and applications and provides a complete and scalable BI solution for corporate business information management and reporting.
Cognos 8 has a completely different architecture than the previous versions, every component is integrated and in one place and the main and most significant idea is to use one common metadata for all components.
Cognos BI 8 components
Cognos 8 Business Intelligence applications:
Query Studio - a tool to create 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 recreated periodically and distributed to people in various departments in an organization. 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 cubes and explore business data in a multidimensional manner. Mainly used by business analysts.
Metrics Studio - used for scorecarding. The idea behind it is to put performance indicators next to the organization's key performance measures (red, orange, green status notation).
Event Studio - a process (an agent) which runs in the background and monitors the data and reacts when ocurrs something which may be cause a problem in the future in the business. For instance, if quantity of product X on stock is less than a given value, event manager can send an email to the responsible person which will contain a warning with problem description and a cognos report attached.
Aside from tracking actual products, it can also be used in monitoring 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.
Cognos 8 Business Intelligence Mobile Analysis - The Cognos 8 BI Mobile Analysis package is a new name for Cognos 7 PowerPlay applications. In fact 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 from the Framework Manager.
Framework Manager is the Cognos 8 modeling tool for creating and managing business-related metadata for use in Cognos 8 analysis and reporting.
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.
Preparation for a migration from Cognos 7 to Cognos 8
In order to prepare for a successful migration, it is necessary to realize how the Cognos 8 applications relate to Cognos 7 and earlier products:
Query Studio and Report Studio are close to the idea of Cognos Impromptu
Analysis Studio is an OLAP reporting tool which puts it in the same category as Cognos PowerPlay. However, there are still many features missing is Analysis Studio compared to PowerPlay Client or Web. That's why Analysis Studio may be considered as a complementary application to PowerPlay, not its replacement.
Please refer to the
PowerPlay and Analysis Studio comparison for more details.
Event Studio is an equivalent to Notice Cast
Report Studio in Cognos 8 implements an integrated maps feature which makes it a replacement for Cognos Visualizer
Cognos Metric Studio is a replacement for Cognos 7 Metrics Manager
Framework manager has the features of Impromptu Administrator. Framework Manager can also be considered in many aspects as an equivalent of PowerPlay Transformer (dimensions and measures modeling, defining hierarchies, etc.).
In Cognos 8, the powerplay cubes created with PowerPlay Transformer can be accessed via Query Studio, Report Studio, Analysis Studio and Transformer products. However, each cube needs to be published via Framework Manager first.
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