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

Used for:

BI is not a single computer system, but framework for leveraging data for

tactical and strategic use

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 enterprise-scale 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 decision-making.

• 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

Report Studio

Report Viewer

Analysis Studio

Event Studio

Ad hoc Reporting

Report Authoring

Viewer

Analysis

Event Cycle Mgmt.

Cognos 8 BI Web User Interface

Cognos Connection

Query Studio

Report Studio

Framework Manager

Data Sources

Report Viewer

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

• ● 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

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 StoreA 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

• Web Based Interface• IBM Cognos Connection• IBM Cognos Administration• Query Studio• Report Studio• Analysis Studio• Event Studio• Metric Studio

• Windows Based Interface• Framework Manager• Metric Designer• Transformer• Map Manager

Cognos 8BI Reporting and Analysis Workflow

Plan forInstallation

Configure Cognos

Setup and Maintain Security

Manage ReportsDistribute &

Schedule

Framework ManagerProjects

Publish Package

AuthorReports

Consume ReportsPrint & View

PLAN MANAGE MODEL AUTHOR VIEW

Install Cognos