Cognos 7 Business Intelligence applications overview

Cognos Series 7

The main Cognos Series 7 Business Intelligence and applications:

· Cognos PowerPlay - multidimensional analysis and OLAP reporting software. PowerPlay is available in a couple of versions: PowerPlay Web, PowerPlay Client and PowerPlay for Microsoft Excel. Cognos PowerPlay windows Client application has more features available than PowerPlay Web Explorer.

· Powerplay Enterpise Server is used to deploy cubes to the Cognos 7 WebPortal and also Cognos 8

· Cognos PowerPlay Transformer is an application used to generate and update PowerCubes which are distributed to the end users

· PowerPlay Connect - an application which manages connections to Cognos OLAP source or any of the supported OLAP servers (Hyperion Essbase, IBM DB2 OLAP, Microsoft Analysis Services, local Microsoft .cub files, SAP BW)

· Cognos Impromptu - software for advanced reporting

· Metrics Manager - scorecarding software

· Notice Cast - event management application which runs in the background

The data model and flow of the data in Cognos is as follows:

· Analyze and define the data structure in source systems

· Use PowerPlay Transformer to connect to one or more sources of data and build multidimensional models

· Create the Cognos PowerCubes in Transformer and distribute those multidimensional models (and/or use PowerPlay Enterprise Server for distribution and to apply security to the OLAP cubes)

· View the distributed PowerCubes using Cognos PowerPlay for Windows, PowerPlay for Excel, Powerplay Web or Cognos Visualizer.