What is Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) encompasses the processes, tools, and
technologies required to transform enterprise data into
information, and information into knowledge that can be used to
enhance decision-making and to create actionable plans that
drive effective business activity.
• BI can be used to acquire
– Tactical insight to optimize business processes by identifying
trends, anomalies, and behaviors that require management
action.
– Strategic insight to align multiple business processes with key
business objectives through integrated performance
management and analysis.
What is Business Intelligence
• Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and
technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing
access to data to help enterprise users make better business
decisions. BI applications include the activities of decision
support systems, query and reporting, online analytical
processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data
mining.
Business intelligence applications can be:
• Mission-critical and integral to an enterprise's operations or
occasional to meet a special requirement
• Enterprise-wide or local to one division, department, or project
• Centrally initiated or driven by user demand
BI is not a single computer system, but framework for leveraging data for
tactical and strategic use
Used for:
What is Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) is about getting the right
information, to the right decision makers, at the right
time.
BI is an enterprise-wide platform that supports
reporting, analysis and decision making.
BI leads to:
fact-based decision making
“single version of the truth”
BI includes reporting and analytics.
Finally: What is Cognos 8
Cognos 8 is Business Intelligence software
that enables users to extract data,
analyze it, and then assemble reports.
IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
- Features
• IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence delivers the complete range of BI
capabilities on a single, service-oriented architecture (SOA).
• Author, share, and use reports that draw on data across all enterprise
sources for better business decisions.
• Deliver a simplified, zero-footprint interface for all users, authors and
administrators.
• Easy to integrate, deploy and use,
• Cognos 8 BI delivers a simplified BI environment that drives high user
adoption, enables better decision-making, and serves as an enterprisescale technology foundation for performance management, now and in
the future.
IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
- Features
• Eliminate barriers to data access. Extended open data access
capabilities allow the complete range of BI functionality - reporting,
analysis, dashboarding, scorecarding and event management - to be
performed against any organizational data, whether relational or
OLAP, helping to eliminate information silos that can inhibit decisionmaking.
• Cognos 8 BI uniquely delivers a single metadata layer and a single
query engine, providing customers with a single, trusted place for all
relevant data and a complete and consistent view of any business issue
or driver While competing solutions require separate tools to view
different types of data,
Cognos Business Intelligence
Capabilities
IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence – Reporting
• Reporting gives you access to a complete list of self-serve report types,
is adaptable to any data source, and operates from a single metadata
layer
• With the reporting capability, you can personalize the style and quality
of BI delivered to your key stakeholders; and you expand the
community of BI users.
Cognos Business Intelligence
Capabilities
• IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence – Analysis
• Analysis enables the guided exploration of information that pertains to
all dimensions of your business, regardless of where the data is stored.
Analyze and report against online analytical processing (OLAP) and
dimensionally aware relational sources
Cognos Business Intelligence
Capabilities
• BM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence – Dashboards
• Business dashboards communicate complex information quickly. They
translate information from your various corporate systems and data
into visually rich presentations using gauges, maps, charts, and other
graphical elements to show multiple results together.
Dashboards
•
A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information that a user
needs. The information is consolidated and arranged on a single screen so that
it can be monitored at a glance.
•
Different segments of information are displayed on different tabs. To create a
dashboard, you assemble the different segments of information into a single
view by using the Multi-page portlet.
Additional Features
• Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is an integrated enterprise
solution
• Cognos 8 combines major upgrades from ReportNet,
PowerPlay Web Explorer, Metrics Manager, and
DecisionStream, and further integrates these components.
• It includes new versions of Report Studio, Query Studio,
and Cognos Connection.
Additional Features
• PowerPlay Web is replaced by Analysis Studio
• Metrics Manager is replaced by Metric Studio
• DecisionStream is replaced by Data Manager
• Event Studio is added to provide event lifecycle
management.
Cognos 8 BI Web User Interface
Cognos Connection
Query Studio
Ad hoc Reporting
Report Studio
Report Authoring
Report Viewer
Viewer
Analysis Studio
Analysis
Event Studio
Event Cycle Mgmt.
Cognos 8 BI Web User Interface
Query
Studio
Report
Studio
Report
Viewer
Cognos Connection
Framework Manager
Data
Sources
Analysis
Studio
Event
Studio
Cognos: Terminology
• Cognos Connection
This is the web portal for Cognos8
Use this portal to publish, find, manage, organize and view your
organization’s business intelligence content, such as reports,
scorecards, and agents.
Cognos: Terminology
• Query Studio
Used to create basic reports that answer simple business questions.
• Report Studio
Use Report Studio to author professional and managed reports.
• Analysis Studio
Used to explore, analyze, and compare dimensional data so that you
can understand and discover answers to business questions in your
company data.
• Event Studio
Used to create agents that monitor status changes, priority customers,
or any other condition that is important to your business.
Cognos 8 Architecture
– Cognos 8BI architecture can be separated into three tiers:
Web server
Applications
Data
– The tiers are based on business function, and are typically
separated by firewalls
– User interfaces sit above the tiers
– Zero-footprint user interface that uses the default browser
configurations provided by Netscape and Microsoft
Cognos 8 Architecture
Tier 1. Web Server: IBM Cognos 8
Gateways
•
The IBM Cognos 8 Web server tier contains one or more IBM Cognos 8
gateways.
•
Web communication in IBM Cognos 8 is typically through gateways,
which reside on one or more Web servers. A gateway is an extension of a
Web server program that transfers information from the Web server to
another server.
•
IBM Cognos 8 supports several types of Web gateways, including
● CGI : The default gateway, CGI can be used for all supported Web
servers. However, for enhanced performance or throughput, you may
choose one of the other supported gateway types.
● ISAPI
ISAPI can be used for the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web
server. It delivers faster performance for IIS.
•
Tier 1. Web Server: IBM Cognos 8
Gateways
•
When an IBM Cognos 8 gateway receives a request, it
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● encrypts passwords to ensure security
● extracts information needed to submit the request to an IBM Cognos 8
server
● attaches environment variables for the Web server
● adds a default namespace to the request to ensure that the server
authenticates the user in the correct namespace
•
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Tier 2. Applications: IBM Cognos 8
Servers
•
The IBM Cognos 8 applications tier contains one or more IBM Cognos 8
servers.
•
An IBM Cognos 8 server runs requests, such as reports, analyses, and
queries, that are forwarded by a gateway. An IBM Cognos 8 server also
renders the IBM Cognos Connection and Metric Studio interfaces.
•
•
Each IBM Cognos 8 installation includes
● Application Tier Components, which include a dispatcher that operates
services and routes requests
● Content Manager which manages IBM Cognos 8 information
•
Tier 3. Data: Content Providers
•
The IBM Cognos 8 data tier contains the
● content store
● data sources
● metric store
•
•
•
Content Store
The content store is a relational database that contains data that IBM 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 IBM Cognos namespace itself; and
information about scheduling and bursting reports. The relational database
can be IBM Cognos Content Database or another supported database.
•
Design models and log files are not stored in the content store.
•
IBM Cognos 8 includes the IBM Cognos Content Database as a default content
store. You can usethe IBM Cognos Content Database as your content store, or you
can use other databases, such asMicrosoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, or Sybase.
Tier 3. Data: Content Providers
•
Data Sources
Data sources, also known as query databases, are relational databases,
dimensional cubes, files, or other physical data stores that can be accessed
through IBM 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.
Web Based Interface and Windows Based Interface
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Web Based Interface
IBM Cognos Connection
IBM Cognos Administration
Query Studio
Report Studio
Analysis Studio
Event Studio
Metric Studio
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Windows Based Interface
Framework Manager
Metric Designer
Transformer
Map Manager
Cognos 8BI Reporting and Analysis
Workflow
PLAN
MANAGE
Plan for
Installation
Install Cognos
MODEL
Configure Cognos
Framework
Manager
Projects
Setup and
Maintain
Security
Publish
Package
Manage Reports
Distribute &
Schedule
AUTHOR
VIEW
Author
Reports
Consume Reports
Print & View