IBM Cognos Valuable Features

Cognos Analytics, or CA for short, is an enterprise level reporting platform. At the most basic level you can use it to build reports. But taking a broader look allows you to see that it covers a vast amount of ground through many different modules. The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools. Framework Manager allows you to build relationships between physical database tables, and even a ROLAP solution. Great for detailed or minor aggregation. Transformer is a basic cube modeling software. Best for building dimensional models over smaller datasets (a few dozen GB), it works extremely well. Dynamic Cubes is a more advanced ROLAP solution that has intelligent aggregate, query, data, and result set caching. In my experience this works best with larger data, in the TB or PB ranges. Data Modules. This is an advanced user level modelling. It allows end users to build and cache datasets which they can then use in ad-hoc dashboards and reports. On the reporting side it, again, has a few tools. Report Studio is the professional reporting environment. This allows BI Developers to create advanced reports, dashboards, analytical applications. While it does take some training, the effort is well worth it. Dashboards work against the data modules. T allows advanced users to work with the data modules they've built previously to build dashboards. Users can quickly drag in fields directly onto the canvas to make graphs, prompts, data grids. Interactivity is automatically defined (but can be defined manually) to allow users to filter one group of objects by clicking on another. Story is a tool used to create presentations. You can use elements from other reports to make a slide show or "guided journey". There are a few other tools, like Event Studio which can be set to automatically perform actions based on query outputs. There is a graph building tool that allows you to build graphs that developers can use in their reports. View full review »

There are several valuable features of Cognos. In this review, I will be concentrate more on the Automating Cube Building and Deployment without any manual intervention.. even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'. View full review »

Flexibility: It offers a variety of technical solutions to better satisfy each customer’s needs and scenarios. IBM Cognos BI (version 10) is a suite of different modules for reporting and analysis: * Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting. * Workspace Advanced: A mid-powerful tool, to create reports of medium complexity. * Query Studio: An easy tool to quickly create ad-hoc queries (with a simple list, or crosstab, or chart). * Analysis Studio: A simple tool to create analysis (like pivot-tables in Excel). * Workspace: A very basic tool to build and show dashboards using other reports components. * Metric Studio: A tool to create scorecards showing trends for corporate KPI and metrics. * Event Studio: A tool that notifies the user of events happening in corporate data. Each of them is perfect for a specific need. For the metadata modeling activity, as well, Cognos offers several modeling tools: * Framework Manager: The most flexible and used tool for metadata modeling. * Transformer: The tool to create multi-dimensional cubes (MOLAP cubes). * Cube Designer: The tool to create dynamic cubes (ROLAP cubes). * Metric Designer: The tool to create data packages to be used by Metric Studio to create scorecards. Depending on how much data has to be analyzed (or other factors), the modeler will decide which modeling tool to use. View full review »

One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability. Its flagship Report Studio component allows BI developers to transform data in many ways, create pixel perfect objects and standard reporting applications. View full review »

Developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source. View full review »

This is an all-in-one solution that provides reporting for a lot of different reports and visualizations. It provides one tool that works for 90% of situations. Cognos has a lot of tools such as: * The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers. * The Query Studio that is aimed at business users. * The Event Studio that is used to check conditions before triggering an action. * The PowerPlay transformer to build cubes. * The Analysis Studio to report against cubes and others such as planning. So it covers a lot of the areas that are required for reporting. As far as visualization is concerned, Cognos is trying to keep up with the others. Cognos version 11 has a lot of new charts but still not as good as the other tools that are dedicated for visualization like Tableau, Spotfire etc. View full review »

Cognos is a MOLAP BI tool which covers cubes, dimensional and relational reports, along with different types of complex functions across all databases available in the market. It is a complete analytical solution including all BI combinations. Within it, Report Studio is one single powerful tool which works across all concepts like slicing and dicing, drill through, drill up and down, advanced filtering/prompts, master-detail, report bursting, and conditional formatting/rendering. Also, the advanced visualizations from versions 10.2.2 and 11 are valuable. The Report Studio feature supports all types of complex and analytical reporting, making it a useful tool. Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users. View full review »

A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports. View full review »

Reliability and strength of product. It's proven to be very robust. It's been great. View full review »

* Dynamic Cubes provide fast analytics through aggregate awareness querying on aggregate, fact tables. * Dashboards providing an easy interface to build interactive dashboards. * Watson Analytics suggests visualizations, which helps users to build visualizations for data exploration. * Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers. * Interactive viewer enabling live interaction with standard reports, filtering, sorting, changing visualizations, etc. View full review »

FM – though it lacks some of the previous version's features: dimensional and sorting. View full review »

It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports. View full review »

We have found this solution evolve over the years, it is now very user-friendly. View full review »

* The ability to build solutions that can be changed so that the solution is up to date. The possibility of integrating third parties through HTML and Java code in a supported way. * It's possible to add to the role management and security that can be maintained. View full review »

The scheduling and reports. View full review »

* Ability to connect to a number of databases * Framework manager modelling * Data modules * Building ad hoc reports from CSV files. View full review »

The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility). View full review »