Business Intelligence in IBM Cognos 10

Recently, I did a school project together with my schoolmate about Business Intelligence in IBM Cognos and I decided to share our findings. First of all, I will very briefly describe Cognos BI solution, then I will share whole presentation we presented as a final outcome.

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence is part of the IBM Business Analytics solution. It provides a unified workspace for business intelligence and analytics that can be used to answer key business questions and outperform the competition. With IBM Cognos BI, users can:

Easily view, assemble and personalize information
Explore all types of information from all angles to assess the current business situation
Analyze facts and anticipate tactical and strategic implications by simply shifting from viewing to more advanced, predictive or what-if analysis
Collaborate to establish decision networks to share insights and drive toward a collective intelligence
Access information and take action anywhere, taking advantage of mobile devices and real-time analytics
Integrate and link analytics in everyday work to business workflow and process

IBM Cognos BI consists of these tools:

IBM Cognos Business Insight
Web-based tool which allows you to use Cognos content and external data sources to interact, analyze and build sophisticated interactive dashboards that facilitate collaborative decision making.
IBM Cognos Business Insight Advanced
Web-based tool that allows you to analyze your data. The user interface is designed to help business users gain insight into their business. You can create reports with relational or dimensional data sources, and than show data in lists, crosstabs, and charts.
IBM Cognos Framework Manager
Desktop application for importing data definitions and modeling that information to provide simplified data access for business reporting and analysis. Models can be published as packages and deployed to Cognos 10, where users can create reports based on the package content.
and others – IBM Cognos Report Studio, IBM Cognos Query Studio, IBM Cognos Analysis Studio, IBM Cognos Event Studio, IBM Cognos Metric Studio, IBM Cognos Administration (for more info about these tools check Handbook – link below)

Basic Architecture

Following diagram displays basic architecture describing relations between Framework Manager, Business Insight, and Business Insight Advanced. Very briefly, Framework Manager provides simplified data access to Datawarehouse, Business Insight Advanced then offers capability to create reports based on the model created in Framework Manager (these models are published to Cognos as packages), Business Insight can create interactive dashboards consisting of reports from Business Insight Advanced and additional external data as excel files.

Framework Manager Architecture

Framework Manager is a desktop application for modeling metadata which provides simplified data access for business reporting and analysis. Models are published as packages and deployed to Cognos.

Business Insight Advanced Architecture

Business Insight Advanced is a web-based tool that allows you to create reports with relational or dimensional data sources, and than show data in lists, crosstabs, and charts.

Business Insight Architecture

Business Insight is a web-based tool which allows you to use Cognos content and external data sources to interact, analyze and build sophisticated interactive dashboards that facilitate collaborative decision making.