One of the most daunting tasks for any Cognos administrator is the process of providing a sustainable and intuitive reporting solution that deciphers the often overwhelming user requirements into the simple question “What do they want?” Feedback is essential in developing methodologies and standards that increase the efficiency and usability of your Cognos environment. While the previous statement sounds straight forward, detailed feedback is often difficult to gather, quite frequently lacking articulation or clear definition. In addition, there are situations where people simply can’t communicate exactly what they want, or do not know how to ask for it. One of the most overlooked and underutilized tools in the IBM Cognos BI arsenal can assist you in forming an idea of what and how you need to deliver on user requests, providing feedback anytime you want without the need for multiple user requirement meetings.
SAP-R/3 is one of the most common ERP applications for manufacturing industries. The data warehouse for such installations has been Oracle. The biggest pain point for Oracle implementations has been getting the data out of SAP-R/3, which involves complex processes and expert domain knowledge. With the introduction of SAP-BW, the data warehouse suite, ’Getting the data out’ of SAP-R/3 requires little effort. Over years, SAP-BW has matured to handle large data volumes and meet the service level agreements for large enterprises. The question then arises, especially for those organizations with an Oracle data warehouse, if moving to SAP-BW makes long term sense. There are several factors to be considered, the core being organizational commitment and long term vision. One of the factors is understanding the differences between SAP-BW and Oracle within the context of an enterprise data warehouse. Read more
As many of you know, TM1 has become a major component of the IBM Cognos BI application offerings. As a corporate OLAP solution, there are a number of advantages to utilizing TM1 versus PowerPlay; from faster response times in larger cubes to the capability to handle vast volumes of data. The expectation of course is that the application will work within the IBM Cognos BI infrastructure, specifically within the user facing studios that make Cognos a best of breed solution. While this is true in most aspects, there are a couple of “work arounds” that must be implemented in order to optimize the user experience with TM1 as an MDX based data source.
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