What is the Scope of COGNOS Products? 1

[digitalgopi]

Dear Experts,

I am basically a Business Objects Programmer and am willing to change line towards COGNOS.

I did some initial exploration on COGNOS Products and seek some clarification.

Could the experts kindly let me know the scope of each of the COGNOS Products (Impromptu, PowerPlay, Reportnet, COGNOS 8).

Is something a Single-shot new replacement to all the rest (COGNOS 8???). I mean to say, the way BO XI has integrated everything in to one package.

To put more elaborately, is there something in Power Play that cannot be done through Report Net (or) vice versa.

Regards
Gopi

 

[tg13]

The Cognos 8 Suite is fairly broad. Is there a specific capbility you're interested in (since you mention PowerPlay and Cognos 8 specifically)?

 

[digitalgopi]

Hi tg13,

In the context of Business Objects, I do the following:

1) Universe Development [Designer moduke]
2) Report Building [BO module]
3) Schedule the Reports [BCA module]
4) Administer the Users [Supervisor module]

If I limit the job role only to Developer, then I can get on only with 1 and 2. If I want to be only as an administrator I can run the show with only 3 and 4.

So, If I want to limit my role only to 'Developer' in terms of COGNOS, which products should I concentrate on.

Is it PowerPlay?
Is it ReportNet?
Is it Impromptu?
Is it COGNOS 8?

Do we have any overlapping features in the above mentioned COGNOS products?

This can happen in real life because, the vendor keeps releasing new Softwares but, the entire customer base in the world cannot upgrade at one go. Right? So, a new job seeker like me can see the existing and the new flavors of COGNOS, being asked for in Job Portal advertisements?

Regards
Gopi

 

[johnherman]

Power Play Transformer is a cube builder. Power Play is the OLAP tool to analyze cubes. You need both.

Impromptu is a report writer and ad-hoc query tool for end users. Impromptu Administration creates a user friendly catalog from the database data dictionary.

Cognos 7 and Cognos 8 series include Impromptu and Power Play.

Report Net is the newest Cognos product line. It is intended to replace Impromptu. Eventually, Power Play will be merged into Report Net as well.

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[cognostechie]

I differ from the above answer a bit. 1st of all, don't try to learn Impromptu at all. It is obsolete now...replaced by Reportnet.

Cognos 8 does NOT include Impromptu, it includes Reportnet which is now called with different component names like Report Studio, Query Studio and Framework Manager. This basically depends on the licenses one has.

From a developer point of view , you would need to learn these:

Framework Manager - Called Metadata Modelling - This is the tool where you set up the mapping to the Data Source.

Report Studio - To make fancy reports and Dashboards
Query Studio - To do ad-hoc queries.

Powerplay Tranformer - Engine where you define the cube and this component builds the cube.

Presuming you are doing Cognos 8, you do not need Powerplay User or Enterprise Server because that is only for version 7. To analyse the cube, you have Analysis Studio in Cognos 8 which is so simple to learn, you don't even need to make any efforts.

Powerplay Transformer class is called 'OLAP Modelling'. Don't confuse that with 'Metadata Modelling' which is Framework Manager class. Framework Manager is the tool used by Reportnet for modelling.