Training on Cognos 8

BusinessObjects XI

Topics
About Business Intelligence Introduction to Cognos 8 Briefing on Features of Cognos 8 Cognos 8 BI Architecture Cognos Installation & Configuration Discussion

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Business Intelligence

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Definition

Business Intelligence is the process of transforming data into information. It facilitates to utilize information they already own, and turn it into the knowledge that directly impacts Corporate performance

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Why do we need Business Intelligence ?

In todays world consumers are now expecting quicker and more efficient service from businesses. To stay competitive, companies must meet or exceed the expectations of consumers. Companies will have to rely more heavily on their business intelligence systems to stay ahead of trends and future events.

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Why do we need Business Intelligence ?

Once business intelligence is gathered effectively and used proactively you can make decisions that benefit your organization before the competition does. The ultimate objective of business intelligence is to improve the timeliness and quality of information.

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Process flow of Business Intelligence

Gathering Data Organizing and Storing Data Analysis Dissemination of Results Decision Making and Action

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Factors Influencing Business Intelligence

Competitors Customers Business Partners Economic Environment Internal Operations

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Business Intelligence tools

Software that enables business users to see and use (analyze) large amounts of complex data. Business Objects Cognos Hyperion Micro Strategy

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Introduction to Cognos 8

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Introduction

Cognos 8 is an integrated business intelligence suite that provides a wide range of functionality to understand your organizations data Cognos 8 is a simple & complete BI product with a wide range of capabilities like reporting, analysis, score carding, dash boards, business event management & data integration on a single proven architecture Cognos 8 has an simplified BI environment that improves user adoption, enables better decision-making, and serves as an enterprise-scale foundation for performance management Cognos 8 is a web product which is used for generating and managing ad hoc reports

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Features of Cognos 8

Reporting Analysis Score carding

Dashboards
Business event management Data integration

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Briefing on Features of Cognos8

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Description on Cognos8 Features

Reporting
A single, adaptive authoring environment for the full range of reports. Create managed business reports, production reports, dashboards, and ad hoc reports. Report against all operational systems, OLAP, and relational data sources. Publish reports in all desired formats: Email, HTML, PDF, Microsoft Excel, CSV, and XML. Offload IT effort and reduce reporting backlog through drag-and-drop formatting and user self-service. Support for Unicode addresses multilingual reporting needs. Scalability to hundreds of thousands of users

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Description on Cognos8 Features

Analysis
Explore and analyze large volumes of data with fast and predictable response times. Analyze all data, using OLAP or dimensionally aware relational sources. Perform deep comparative analysis of business performance across multiple dimensions (time, product, customer, etc.). Analyze large, complex data sets with an easy-to-use, drag-and drop user interface, pivoting, and filtering.

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Description on Cognos8 Features

Score carding
Link initiatives to strategy with metrics and strategy maps. At-a-glance view of performance against targets. Ensure accountability by linking metrics to owners. Understand performance trends with direct access to reports and analysis. Out-of-the-box initiative tracking to manage corrective actions. Use metric data to drive your enterprise planning for integrated performance management.

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Description on Cognos8 Features

Dash boards
Deliver information from different sources in a single visual report. Provide an at-a-glance snapshot of business performance. Shorten time to decisions with multi-object performance reports, maps, charts, scorecards, lists, and interactive OLAP analysis. Create personalized information centers to monitor performance. Connect dashboard elements with underlying data for further reporting and analysis. Support management methodologies such as Six Sigma.

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Description on Cognos8 USP

Business event management

Automate the detection and management of important business events. Monitor operational systems to detect business process events. Set alerts and deliver time-critical information to decision-makers across departments and locations. Reduce time-to-action and enable fact-based issue resolution. Manage events throughout their lifecycle until they are resolved

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Description on Cognos8 Features

Data Integration
With extract, transform, and load (ETL) capability, deliver a data warehouse ready for analysis and reporting. Built on a dimensional framework to provide information based on the way business users think. Optimized for Cognos 8 BI capabilities. Lets you leverage and enhance your investments in third-party tools.

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Cognos 8 BI Architecture

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Cognos 8 Architecture

Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is built with a single, modern Web services architecture. Modern, multi-tier architecture built using open, modern Web standards such as XML, SOAP, and WSDL. Common zero-footprint, browser-based environment requires no desktop installs, plug-ins, or applets. Single point of update; deploy changes to all users simultaneously Leverages your existing IT assets and infrastructure, including security systems, RDBMS, application servers, Web applications, networks, and metadata.

Supports numerous standards and data sources without

coding or data migration.

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Cognos 8 Architecture

Cognos 8 BI delivers all the capabilities that users require in one product, on one architecture. As a standardized BI environment it reduces complexity and provides greater business agility. Integrates easily with Web portals such as IBM WebSphere, SAP Enterprise Portal, and Plumtree Portal

Ensures dynamic load balancing Supports multilingual reporting Provides failover recovery for 24x7 operation

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The Multi-tier Cognos 8 Architecture

Cognos 8 has a multi-tier architecture. The multi-tier

architecture has been separated to 3 tiers

Web Server Applications Data

The tiers are based on business function, and are typically separated by network firewalls.

** Cognos 8 user interfaces sit above the tiers

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Diagrammatic view of Cognos 8 BI Architecture

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User Interfaces

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Web-based User Interfaces

The zero footprint, Web-based interfaces include Cognos Connection Query Studio Report Studio Analysis Studio Event Studio Metric Studio

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Cognos Connection Cognos Connection is a Web portal provided with Cognos 8, providing a single access point to the corporate data available to its products. It provides a single point of entry for querying, analyzing, and organizing data, and for creating reports, scorecards, and events. Users can run all their Web-based Cognos 8 applications through Cognos Connection. Other business intelligence applications, and URLs to other applications, can be integrated with Cognos Connection.

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Query Studio Query Studio is an ad-hoc reporting tool that lets users with little or no training quickly design, create and save reports to meet reporting needs not covered by the standard, professional reports created in Report Studio. Report Studio Report Studio lets report authors create, edit, and distribute a wide range of professional reports. They can also define corporatestandard report templates for use in Query Studio, and edit and modify reports created in Query Studio or Analysis Studio. Analysis Studio In Analysis Studio, users can explore, analyze, and compare dimensional data. Analysis Studio provides access to dimensional, OLAP (online analytical processing), and dimensionally modeled relational data sources. Analyses created in Analysis Studio can be opened in Report Studio and used to build professional reports.

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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 that must be dealt with. 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 may trigger an event, sending an email to the appropriate people. Metric Studio In Metric Studio, you can create and deliver a customized scorecarding environment for monitoring and analyzing metrics throughout your organization. Users can monitor, analyze, and report on time-critical information by using scorecards based on cross-functional metrics.
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Windows-based User Interfaces

The Windows-based Cognos 8 interfaces are the modeling components: Framework Manager Metric Designer Transformer Map Manager

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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. Metadata is published for use by reporting tools as a package, providing a single, integrated business view of any number of heterogeneous data sources. OLAP cubes are designed to contain sufficient metadata for business intelligence reporting and analysis. Because cube metadata may change as a cube is developed, Framework Manager models the minimum amount of information needed to connect to a cube. Cube dimensions, hierarchies, and levels are loaded at run time. Metric Designer Metric Designer is the Cognos 8 modeling tool used to create extracts for use in Cognos 8 scorecarding applications. Extracts are used to map and transfer information from existing metadata sources such as Framework Manager and Impromptu Query Definition (.iqd) files.

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Transformer Transformer is a modeling tool for creating PowerCubes for use with Cognos Series 7 and Cognos 8. Map Manager Administrators and modelers use a Windows utility named Map Manager to import maps and update labels for maps in Report Studio. For map features such as country and city names, administrators and modelers can define alternative names to provide multilingual versions of text that appears on the map.

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Tier 1. Web Server: Cognos 8 Gateways

A gateway is an extension of a Web server program that transfers information from the Web server to another server. Cognos 8 supports several types of Web gateways, including 1. CGI 2. ISAPI 3. Apache_Mode 4. Servlet

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Tier 2. Applications: Cognos 8 Servers

The Cognos 8 applications tier contains one or more Cognos 8 servers. A Cognos 8 server runs requests, such as reports, analyses, and queries, that are forwarded by a gateway. A Cognos 8 server also renders the Cognos Connection and Metric Studio interfaces. Each Cognos 8 installation includes Application Tier Components, which include a dispatcher, that operates services and routes requests Content Manager, which manages Cognos 8 information

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Dispatcher The dispatcher starts all Cognos 8 services configured and enabled on a computer, and routes requests. The dispatcher is a multithreaded application that uses one or more threads per request. Configuration changes are routinely communicated to all running dispatchers. The dispatcher includes Cognos Application Firewall to provide security for Cognos 8. The Dispatcher services are: Presentation Service, Report Service, Batch report Service, Job Service, Monitor Service, Log Service, Content Service, Metric Manager Service, Data Integration Service, Delivery Service, Event management Service, Agent Service, System Service,

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Content Manager
Content Manager is the Cognos 8 service that manages the storage of customer application data, including security, configuration data, models, metrics, report specifications, and report output. Content Manager is needed to publish models, retrieve or store report specifications, manage scheduling information, and manage the Cognos namespace. Content Manager stores information in a content store database, which is typically located in Tier 3 of the architecture.

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Access Manager Content Manager contains Access Manager, the primary security component of Cognos 8. Access Manager leverages your existing security providers for use with Cognos 8. It provides Cognos 8 with a consistent set of security capabilities and APIs, including user authentication, authorization , and encryption. It also provides support for the Cognos namespace. Some security capabilities, such as user authentication, are external to Cognos 8 but are exposed to Cognos 8 by Access Manager. Other capabilities, such as authorization, are internal to Cognos 8, and are implemented by Access Manager.

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Tier 3. Data: Content Providers

The Cognos 8 data tier contains the content store data sources metric store

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Content Store The content store is a relational database that contains data that Cognos 8 needs to operate, such as report specifications, published models, and the 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. Design models and log files are not stored in the content store. The Cognos 8 service that uses the content store is named Content Manager. Content Manager uses a JDBC (Java DataBase Connectivity) API to access the content store and metric stores. Data Sources Data sources are relational databases, dimensional cubes, files, or other physical data stores that can be accessed through Cognos 8. Application Tier Components use data source connections to access data sources. Metric Store A metric store is a relational database that contains content for metric packages. A metric store also contains Metric Studio settings, such as user preferences. More than one metric store may be created. For example, one metric store may contain content for a sales application and another metric store may contain content for a finance application.
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Cognos 8 Installation & Configuration

Cognos Installation and Configuration

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Cognos 8 Installation & Configuration

Pre-requisites for Cognos 8 Configuration

Install SQL Server Install SP4 Cognos 8 Server installation Installation of Cognos 8 Cognos configuration

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Thank You

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