Internal and Confidential

Cognos 8 – Map Manager

CONFIDENTIAL

April 21, 2023

April 21, 2023

Agenda

• Map Manager Overview

• Whats new in Map Manager 8.4?

• Map Manager Features

• Workshops

April 21, 2023

Map Manager

• Map Manager is a Windows program that is used to prepare maps for use in reports.

• Aliases and languages can be added to the sample maps that Cognos provides.

• Custom maps can be converted from a third-party source to Cognos map format (CMF) and then aliases and languages can be added.

• Map Manager supports third-party maps that use geoset format (GST), from vendors such as MapInfo, OEM-preferred provider for map data.

April 21, 2023

What is New (Map Manager) Details 

Creating New Map Layers from Existing Map Layers 

In a map that contains region layers, you can create new region layers from existing ones using IBM Cognos Map Manager. Each new region within the new layer is made up of one or more complete regions from the existing region layer. As the report author, you can use this new feature to customize maps when the regions in the supplied maps do not correspond to the way information is managed and reported on.

What’s New in Map Manager 8.4?

April 21, 2023

Cognos Map Manager – Workflow Diagram

April 21, 2023

Cognos Map Manager

Within each of the applications, certain actions can be performed which are shown in the following table.

Application Actions permitted Actions not permitted

Report Viewer Drill through

Get tool tips

Zoom

Change layer content

Adjust mismatched data

Report Studio • Choose map layers

• Apply default map colors

• Add aliases within report

• Define rules for color based on

data source queries and filters

Change map content

April 21, 2023

Cognos Map Manager

.

Application Actions permitted Actions not permitted

Map Manager • Convert third-party maps from MapInfo

format to Cognos format

• Change the preview image

• Add a description

• Define aliases for feature names

• Add languages

Change map content

MapInfo Professional

• Create new objects

• Create new layers in MapInfo tab format

• Add languages

• Define rules for color

based on data sources

April 21, 2023

Cognos Map Manager

Map Manager manages the following types of information in map files:

Preview imagesShows thumbnail images of the map. One can preview the general appearance of the map. Preview images do not contain data.

LayersShows thematic groupings of features. For example, it may include regions such as provinces, territories or states, or categories such as major and minor cities.

FeaturesSpecifies the points or named elements on a map. Text labels identify points on the map.

Base languageIdentifies the default language for labels. Used when the user’s preferred language does not exist in the map file. In Report Studio, this is the language for labels at run time if the user locale is not a supported language in the map file.

DictionaryLists the feature names and any aliases for each available language.

April 21, 2023

Report Studio and Map Charts

•A map in Cognos 8 consists of a collection of layers. Each layer contains different information that is determined either from the map file or from your data source.•A layer is like a transparency that is placed on top of the base map. Each layer adds more information to the map.•At run time, Report Studio queries the data source to retrieve the data to show in the map chart•Map layers and points (map features) on the map chart use the numeric values of the data to display the appropriate color. •If the text for the labels that appears on the map differs between the map file and the data source, you must set up aliases in the map file before you run the query

Reports in Report Studio use maps to represent data that can be displayed spatially.

April 21, 2023

Map File

Map Manager is used when we need to import maps from third-party sources or manage existing Cognos map files.

Open an existing Cognos map file (.cmf) to view the map or to add aliases, a description, orlanguages.

We use the import wizard to open map files from a third-party source.

Before custom maps in Report Studio can be used, they must be converted to a Cognos map file (.cmf). For Cognos 8 release, MapInfo geosets (*.gst) and related files are supported.

To be converted to a Cognos map file, the third-party map must meet the following requirements:

• The MapInfo tab files must be referenced by *.gst files.• Map objects (regions and points) must have an identifier and the identifier must be in the first column of the associated MapInfo table.• If aliases are defined for the identifiers, they must be in any column except the first column.

April 21, 2023

Map Legend

April 21, 2023

Cognos Map Manager

Map Sizes

• Feature counts are provided for each layer of each map. The performance for maps is dependent on both the complexity of the boundaries as well as the feature counts.

• Tooltips, displayed when hovering over map features, requires significantly more information to be sent to the user’s browser. If this feature is not required, when authoring the map in Report Studio, set the appropriate property to “Hide”, which is the default setting.

Languages

• Multiple languages are provided for many of the maps. • The base language is listed first followed by the other languages available in the map.• If the language of the locale being used is not present in the map, the base language will be used.• Languages listed in Italics are only provided for the layer names and not the actual place names.

April 21, 2023

Report Studio Map

Report Studio supports two layers types that are defined with a map:

• regions• points

Region layers are areas on the map like continents, countries, states. Regions are of arbitrary shape as determined by the map requirements.

Points are spots on the map such as cities, factories, stores and the like. Points are always displayed as circles.

The map definition may contain an arbitrary number of layers of the two layer types.

Report Studio operates on a three-layer model using the region and point layers for dual purposes.

April 21, 2023

Report Studio Map

1 Region layer a Color code areas on the map to compare values b Report Studio allows one per map within the current report c Example: Countries

2 Point layer a Color code or size circles on the map to compare values b Report Studio allows one per map within the current report c Example: Cities

3 Display layers a Show additional map details to provide context to the reader b Report Studio allows 0, 1 or more per map within the current report c Example: On a map showing data by country, also display the capital cities (with no data by city).

April 21, 2023

Region Layers

• Regions are areas on the map such as continents, countries, states, etc.• Regions are used with a measure to compare the values of that measure across regions

using contrasting colors.For example, the countries on the world map are regions against which we map sales success. Green is good in this example.

• Regions can be color coded based on a measure such as quantity, revenue, profit, etc. • The minimum and maximum measure quantity values by country will be calculated and colors assigned accordingly

April 21, 2023

Point Layers

• Points define sites on the map such as cities, manufacturing plants, or other locations of interest.

• Points appear as circles that can be color coded and/or sized according to a measure value.

Example We might show cities in different colors to indicate comparable revenue with different size circles to show comparable product quantity.

April 21, 2023

Display Layers

• One or more region or point layers defined within the map as display layers can be selected.

• These are layers which are displayed on the map for added context or to improve the appearance but do not show query data.

• In some maps, there are display only layers. In the world map for example, the Ocean layer cannot be used to plot data.

• In general, any region or point layer not used to display data can be used as a display layer.

• Zero, one or more displays can be selected.

April 21, 2023

Map Dictionary

Overview

When we display the data on a map, key values in your query are used – such as Country or City – to bind (match) to like-values in the map.

Each map contains a dictionary of key values for each layer – Country and City names for example – in different languages.

For example, a map might have country names in several languages as so:

en fr de ja

Canada Le Canada Kanada

Great Britain La Grande Bretagne Großbritannien

United States

Les Etats-Unis d'Amérique

Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika

Japan Le Japon Japan

April 21, 2023

Map Dictionary

If the data does not match the map values (perhaps data contains “England” and the map uses “Great Britain”) there are 3 solutions

1.Create a calculation which renames the country in the query if ([Country] = “England”) then (“Great Britain”) else ([Country]).

This could be done in the Framework Manager model is you are working with RDBMS based data.

2. Create an alias in the map in each report..

3. Create an alias in the map definition itself using Map Manager.

April 21, 2023

Maps and Multilingual Applications

Binding Query Data to the Map Dictionary

When a user runs a report, the user’s language (run locale) is used to bind (match) values from the query to the map dictionary. If the country report is run in English (the run locale is en-any region), English country names coming from the database. Binding these values to the map will also succeed by using the English country names in the map.

If the run locale is changed to French (run locale of fr-any region), the database will return French country names in the query and these will be bound to French countrynames in the map.

What is happening behind the scenes is that Cognos 8 is using the user’slanguage (run locale) to determine the map dictionary language. If the runlocale is French, then the French dictionary is used.

April 21, 2023

Drill Through on Maps

Drill Through on Maps

Maps support drill through to allow calling of another report and passing down the parameters or data values.

Maps do not currently support drill down which is a drill action to expand the current map focus by replacing the current map with a new map for the selected region.

Drill on maps can be specified in two ways.

1) On the overall map so that the same drill through definition is applied to all regions/points.

2) Specific drill paths can be specified for individual regions/points. .

April 21, 2023

Map Manager Limitation

There are many things you might wish to do with maps. It is important to understand what Map Manager can and cannot do.

What Map Manager cannot do is:

1.Create or modify maps

2.Import non-MapInfo format maps. Maps must be converted to MapInfo format before being imported.

3.Export maps to MapInfo or other formats.

4. Combine features in existing layers to create custom regions.

For example, one wishing to create sales territories based on the world map requires mapping tools from a map vendor because Map Manager does not provide this capability.

5. Create a zoomed in map showing a portion of the map in a larger size.

Map Manager delivers Cognos map functions atop the vendors’ maps. Map Manager is not a replacement for the map vendor tools..