Ben Harden
Jan 31 2010
Scheduling Cognos Transformer Cubes in a Production Environment
The Cognos Transformer tool is extremely powerful and does a great job of producing cubes via the transformer interface. The problem I have with Transformer, and the Cognos 8 BI suite, is that it provides no easy way to automatically refresh cube data on a regular schedule. At every client I visit, they want to refresh cubes regularly for use in Analysis Studio. It sounds easy enough but when you start to dig deeper you realize that it is not included in the out of the box Cognos functionality. Surprisingly a custom solution is required to achieve this. After each release I continue to wonder why IBM does not include cube refresh functionality within the Cognos Connection scheduling tool. It seems like it would be the perfect place and relatively simple given how robust the scheduling options are.
Jan 27 2010
Bursting Reports Using Cognos 8
What is Report Bursting?
Bursting reports is the technique used to run a report once and divide the results for distribution to unique recipients.
Advantages
There can be significant performance improvements by using report bursting. For example, if you need to distribute a sales report 50 sales persons with the results separated by the salesman you have two options. You could run the report 50 times filtering the report differently (by salesperson) for each run or you could run the report once and burst the results to each salesperson. By running the report once and bursting the results, the database is only hit once instead of 50 times.
Jan 25 2010
IBM Cognos vs. Business Objects
I’m a IBM Certified Cognos developer who is just learning Business Objects. With many years of Cognos experience and just a few weeks with BO I must be clearly biased towards Cognos and I probably am. So with my bias why even write something comparing the two technologies? Why not? As a consultant I am always learning new technologies and being asked to compare and contrast them. Given the number of different tools offered by both vendors, I think the comparison is best done at the individual tool level. It is also important to note that I have not used all the tools Business Objects has to offer.
Web Intelligence vs. Report Studio/Query Studio
Jul 27 2009
Cognos Upgrade - Lift and Shift vs. Rebuild
When doing an upgrade from Cognos 7 to Cognos 8 there are two options, use the Cognos provided migration tools to do a "lift and shift" or rebuild all frameworks and reports from scratch. Clients want to choose the "lift and shift" option and for good reason. It seems like it would go faster, require less work and be more cost effective. Is it really?
The lift and shift method may provide quicker results, but does it really require less work and is it more cost effective? In my experience the answer is almost always no. Quality suffers, best practices are not followed, and perhaps most importantly, any mistakes made in the old version are replicated. When evaluating the approach, the following things should be considered:
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How many catalogs does the legacy environment have? Most of my clients have, over time, accumulated multiple catalogs that are essentially the same but have been tweaked to meet a specific reporting need. In the new framework world, these redundant catalogs should be merged into one version of the truth. If this is not done, maintenance costs skyrocket and administration and code promotion becomes a serious pain point.
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Best practices - The Cognos catalog migration tools do not move data into a framework that follows best practices. Only two layers of abstraction are provided requiring additional development work to get to a 3 layer model. If these changes are made to the framework after migration, all migrated reports will likely need to be modified to support the changes.
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Cardinality between query subjects may not be accurate after a migration.
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Many of the new features of the Studios are not leveraged during the migration leaving reports looking stale.
So if the conclusion is to stay away from a straight migration using the provided migration tools then is there a place or reason to use the migration tools at all? Simple stated - yes. The migration tools can be of tremendous help when doing the upfront planning and analysis for the upgrade. In the case where documentation of the legacy reporting environment is limited or non existent, quickly migrating catalogs gives you an easy way to graphically view relationships between query subjects as well as better understand the data at hand. If there are multiple catalogs to review, having them available in Framework Manager makes comparisons and merge analysis much more straightforward. Without question, using this information as input to the future state framework design jumpstarts the upgrade and adds value immediately.
Jul 26 2009
Cognos Configuration Management Options
As IBM's Cognos business intelligence tools become more sophisticated and reports, cubes and frameworks more complex, I find it difficult to understand why there is no easy way to version Cognos code. True, Framework manager does have the ability to connect to Source Safe or CVS, but have you ever tried to roll back to a previous version? The way the various framework components are versioned and stored within the CM tool does not group all the components together as a single version making it difficult if not impossible to roll back. I’ve even opened a case with IBM Cognos to make sure this is the case and they confirmed that this feature does not allow the ability back to previous versions. Knowing that a framework is just XML makes it even harder for me to understand why this is so difficult. IBM Cognos suggests that instead of rolling back using a source control system, you should roll back using the Synchronize Function. I’ve found it difficult to get back to where I want using this function
What about versioning and control of report studio reports? A Report Studio report is nothing more than an XML file, so it should be simple to maintain a history of changes and allow the ability to roll back to a previous version if needed. Interestingly enough, unlike framework manager, there is no option to connect to a CM tool from within Report Studio (or any of the other studios for that matter). My clients are always shocked to find that this feature does not exist. The best workaround I have found is to copy the report to the clipboard, paste the XML definition into notepad and load into the CM tool of choice from there. In version 8.3 and later, this is made even easier with the ability to save a report to the local machine, avoiding the step of copying to the clipboard. It is still far from an ideal solution, but at least reports can be safely versioned and stored in a CM tool.
According to IBM Cognos, versioning is not available because of security concerns with a source control system connecting to the content store. If this is such a concern, why not build a versioning capability right into the content store? Given that everything is already in a relational database, it should be straightforward to add some versioning capabilities. I’ve also found a product by Motio that claims to allow versioning in the studios, I have not tried it, but if it can be done by a 3rd party, why not by IBM Cognos? Perhaps IBM might even think about acquiring Motio?
There just are not many good options for Cognos Configuration Management out of the box. With such a powerful and sophisticated tool I hope this changes soon. Until then, we'll have to make do with workaournds and 3rd party solutions.