Cognos 10.2 New Features

 With the release of Cognos 10.2, we want to highlight significant new features.

The new version has come up with a packaged solution to cater improved visualization, richer functionality,

optimized ROLAP solution & heightened security. Let’s have a deep dive into each of these new features:

Architecture optimization

Complete 64-bit solution

Until the release of Cognos BI 10.2, components like gateway, metric server & data manager of the overall

BI suite remained as 32-bit only products. Customers who wished to utilize 64-bit server components, were

required to install a split 64/32-bit Cognos architecture, which added to the complexity of these

environments.  Cognos BI 10.2 is now a full 64-bit product across the board (with optional 32-bit still

available). This will enable customers to maximize the amount of available memory across Cognos servers

and therefore help to increase the potential environment performance.

   

Dynamic Cube

Cognos Dynamic Cubes complements the existing query engine, & extends Cognos scalability to enable

speed-of-thought analytics over terabytes of enterprise data, without being forced to rely on a new data-

warehousing appliance. This capability adds a new level of query intelligence so you can unleash the power

of your large enterprise data warehouse. Key highlight of this feature are

 

In-memory OLAP engine offers high performance interactive analysis.

Aggregate awareness allows query routing to in-memory or physical aggregate table in the data

warehouse.

Aggregate Advisor feature will monitor, recommend new physical aggregate tables, & even generate

SQL/DDL.

New OLAP modelling tool.

Conformed dimensions can be shared with multiple cubes.

  

Screenshot of IBM Cognos Cube Designer

Cognos Dynamic Cubes is tightly integrated into the Cognos BI stack, this way allows existing customers to

integrate this technology into their application environment without affecting existing users, who are already

familiar with interfaces such as Report Studio, Business Workspace, and Business Workspace Advanced

(previously named Business Insight and Business Insight Advanced). 

 

Screenshot of the Aggregate Advisor Wizard

 Administration Optimization

Content Archival

This feature allows customers to move report output from their content store database to either their file

system or FileNet and also allow this output to be fully accessible through the Cognos Connection user

interface. This feature also offers the benefit of reducing content manager load and information security &

accuracy thereby facilitating regulatory compliance. When archived output is requested by a user, the

application tier dispatchers have a repository Service that, when enabled, is responsible for serving

archived output to the user.

 

 

Screenshot of adding a External Repository to the Data Source Connections in IBM Cognos Administration

 

Screenshot of defining Alias Roots for archiving to the File System

Multi-Tenancy

Though Cognos has had a Multi-Tenant capability in earlier releases, it was achieved either by

authentication source or with distributed installation & configuration. Cognos 10.2 provides better support

for multi-tenant environments, it allows the administrator to create a Tenant ID and use the Tenant ID

session parameter in Cognos modeling tool for enabling security in the Cognos Namespace.  It also

provides the ability to audit by Tenant and makes it much easier to administer and maintain the

environment. 

Style management utility (SMU)

This allows you to visually create new “skins” for Cognos to customize the appearance of the product. SMU

has a live viewer so that you can see the impact your change makes on Cognos Connection before saving

it. You can publish the new skin to Cognos Connection and Make it available to users only after fully testing

it. You can then quickly move your tested skin to other environments such as Development, QA/UAT and

Production. Images, background colours, banners, text colours and more are easily customized.

Tool Enhancements

Cognos Workspace (previously known as Business Insight)

The new functionality added to the workspace is that you can now create Multi Tabbed Workspace and you

have a new control called an Action Button which you can program to trigger tab changes. Users familiar

with Excel will be pleased to hear that you can now Freeze and Unfreeze column and row heading when

scrolling. There is a Data Visualization Guide called Visual Recommender that will help you select the

appropriate chart type based on your data values in your workspace, including reason for that decision. The

ability to print your workspace has also been included in this release. Additionally it has also key features

 

Screenshot of a tabbed IBM Cognos Workspace

Cognos Insight 10.2

Though in earlier release (10.1.1) personal analytics solution was rolled out, Cognos Insight v10.2 enables

business users and analysts to independently and easily access business information and shares it with

others. Anyone can easily import personal or business data from spreadsheets or csv files, select

visualisations of the data, drill down for trends, and more. Use drag and drop data visualisation, what-if

scenario modelling, and dashboard style delivery.

 

Screenshot of a Cognos Insight Workspace

 The new version also includes several new functions such as: 

Smart Metadata: New built-in algorithm automatically recognize hierarchy structure & re-arranges upon

import.

Fiscal Year & Populate Whole Year: While importing data, you can set your fiscal year to begin at a

specified month.

Tree Maps: It includes new chart types & tree maps.

Drill-up/Drill down in chart: offers drill-up & drill-down capabilities & you can drag a data item to chart

from a crosstab or content pane.

Top/Bottom Filtering: You can now filter cross tab to show only the top or bottom results.

Package Import: You can now import the content of package from IBM Cognos BI into Cognos Insight &

work with that data to create workspace.

Time Roll-ups: Time dimension created during import support time roll-up. 

 Report Studio

It has come up with couple of features like Cognos 10 charts, exposing macros in expression editor. It also

includes key features

Prompt API: It fully supported and documented. Using JavaScript it allows you to set, read, delete and

validate prompts values, an useful example of this would be limiting the user to select a date value equal to

or less than the latest period. The API is supported in Report Studio, Cognos Viewer, Cognos Workspace

and Cognos Workspace Advanced.

Excel Report Output: Exporting report output to Excel is now easier as they have increase the maximum

number of columns to 16,384 and 1,048,576 rows. You can also export in a new format called Excel 2007

Data, which is a lightweight transfer of Excel without any report formatting.

 Cognos Mobile 10.2

As a part of continuous efforts towards Go mobile enhancement, new IBM Cognos Mobile 10.2 is now

available on iTunes for downloads. It encompasses additional features mentioned below

 

 

Restricted access to Cognos Mobile: Only users who are granted access to this secured function can

access the IBM Cognos content through IBM Cognos Mobile. A new role named Mobile Users was added

to the predefined roles in the Cognos namespace in IBM Cognos Administration to help with setting up

access permissions for the Mobile secured function

Apple push notifications: You can now use Apple push notifications to notify the users of the IBM Cognos

Mobile native iPad application about the availability of new IBM Cognos BI reports.

Note: The supported notifications include badges and text alerts. Sounds are not supported.

Burst reports on Cognos Mobile: Reports can now be distributed to IBM® Cognos® Mobile users by

bursting. Users receive burst reports in the language specified in their preferences in IBM Cognos

Connection. If the report is not burst in the language specified by the user's preference in Cognos

Connection, the user receives the report in the server default language.

Users can also receive multiple versions of burst reports, with the burst key appended to the report name.

For example, a sales manager who is responsible for multiple regions receives the burst report for each

region.

Support for new languages: IBM Cognos Mobile now supports Thai.