Entries by Ironside Group

How to Increase User Adoption with IBM Cognos 8 Auditing

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 […]

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Data Warehousing in an SAP-Centric Environment

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 […]

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Determinants – The Answer to a Framework Manager Mystery

Editor’s Note:  This blog was originally posted on February 1, 2010, and has been reviewed/updated on October 5, 2020.  Quite some changes have been applied to Framework Manager tool over the past decade, we find that the tuning of determinants is still a valid approach to address issues of sharing dimensions among multi-facts, especially when […]

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Understanding the Cognos Application Firewall

If you’ve spent any time administering or configuring an IBM Cognos installation, then you have likely encountered and possibly pondered the feature known as the Cognos Application Firewall (CAF). The name itself seems to attract attention, and we are often asked for additional information about this feature by administrators and information security professionals who work […]

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Understanding Star Schema

If your house is anything like mine, then it would be called Google.  You have to search to get anything you want.  Even if your house is well organized, to find a book  by title or author you have to sift through the bookcase.  However, if you decide to count all of your books regardless […]

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About Success and Failure: Continued

Almost every day I hear of cases where Business Intelligence (BI) initiatives in companies are achieving tremendous results (3,623% ROI in 1 case) or are dismal failures and are wasting money.  In my experience, there are two very key elements which are present in every successful BI project, and without them the initiatives are almost […]

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Ironside Group Presented at IBM-Cognos Performance 2009 Boston with client Timberland

Gregory Bonnette, Senior Technical Consultant of the Ironside Group presented alongside longtime client  ”The Timberland Company” at IBM-Cognos Performance 2009 in Boston on November 20, 2009. Here is the Session Abstract describing this presentation: Lessons Learned: Building a New Enterprise Platform for Business Intelligence The Timberland Company maintains a rich IBM Cognos Series 7 environment with hundreds of […]

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Demystifying IBM Cognos 8 Security

One of the most challenging aspects of establishing any enterprise business intelligence platform is the design and implementation of a security model that is flexible and extensible enough to meet the needs of your business while also remaining simple enough to administer and maintain. Every organization is unique in how they operate, so a structure […]

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