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Ironside Tech Tip: Best Practices for Documenting Report Studio Reports

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Synopsis:

Three methodologies for documenting Report Studio reports.

Overview:

Reporting tools like IBM Cognos Report Studio do not naturally provide a means of documenting and commenting procedures like traditional programming languages do. As a result, once a report has been created, it may be difficult to follow the logic and design of the original report, modify it, or reverse-engineer how it works. Additionally, the lack of documentation makes it difficult to determine how and why a report was built and what specific techniques were used to create it. Read more

Heat Map Formatting using HTML

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Even if you don’t have access to the RAVE visualizations available in Cognos 10.2.1, there are still some options to produce non-standard charts and simulate things such as heat maps using older Cognos versions. With some creative HTML use, you can set up a heat map that responds to various conditions in your reports. This article will discuss how to implement this structure. Read more

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Gantt Charts Using Cognos 10.2.1 RAVE Technology

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The IBM Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine (RAVE) is a new tool introduced in Cognos 10.2.1. The engine can run on the server or the client, allowing for the dynamic creation of both static and active charts. Additionally, visualizations can be tweaked to allow for new charting options on the fly. IBM’s AnalyticsZone website provides a large number of downloadable visualizations, and one of the available options is Gantt charts. The standard Cognos 8/10 charting engine does not provide this type of chart, so this is a great opportunity to expand what Cognos can do. Read more

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IBM Cognos TM1 Performance Modeler and Architect: Potential Collaboration Pitfalls

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IBM is encouraging developers to use Performance Modeler as the main tool for creating and maintaining TM1 server objects. Performance Modeler offers many features that Architect simply does not provide. The push toward Performance Modeler is evident in IBM’s documentation, presentations, and rapid update releases for the tool. For now, Architect will still exist and will continue to serve as a development tool. As future releases of Performance Modeler provide more and more functionality, Architect will likely only be used to maintain older TM1 versions going forward. Read more

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Ironside Webinar Series: TM1 Performance Modeler vs. Architect – Part 1

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On April 15th, Ironside hosted a TM1 Performance Modeler vs. Architect Comparison webinar covering the different features of these powerful development tools. This webinar focused on how TM1 Performance Modeler’s tools and wizards help non-technical contributors develop and maintain their own TM1 servers with minimal support from the IT department. Read more

The Road to IBM Vision

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Join us on The Road to IBM Vision as we prepare for IBM’s premier global conference for finance, risk management, and sales compensation professionals coming to Orlando, Florida from May 18-21! In preparation for Vision, we will be hosting two exciting webinars: TM1 Performance Modeler and Architect Comparison and Introduction to IBM Cognos Disclosure Management. Read more

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Ironside Tech Tip: Integrate Salesforce.com with IBM Cognos

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Salesforce.com, most commonly implemented for its customer relationship management (CRM) platform, is a well-known industry leader in client relationship management as well as social performance management, sales performance management, and other areas. The IBM Cognos enterprise combined with Salesforce data can help your organization build a single view of your business and create reports, dashboards, and scorecards for analyzing your sales information. A few quick benefits of integrating Salesforce with Cognos are as follows: Read more

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Ironside Tech Tip: Change Transformer File and Server Locations Using an MDL Script

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When creating multidimensional models with IBM Cognos Transformer, many different types of data sources can be utilized such as reports, packages, Excel, and comma delimited files to design the model. Also various work environments may be used such as TEST, DEV, and PROD all of which have different server locations. Read more

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Why Migrate from IBM Cognos Planning to TM1?

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At first glance, IBM Cognos TM1 and Cognos Planning have similar features. They both leverage a multicube architecture and support complex, cross-cube calculations.

The primary differentiating feature of IBM Cognos TM1 can be found in its efficient calculation engine and its method for storing data. When users enter data into most other planning applications, a read/write procedure is performed to reflect the change in a database stored on a hard disk. In contrast, IBM Cognos TM1 calculations and data storage happens in memory/RAM. This allows entered data to be immediately updated within the cube and retrieved. As a result, data is available real-time, which greatly enhances both the performance of queries and ability to perform what-if analytics. Read more

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Migrating from Oracle to Netezza

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Many are looking to IBM Puredata System for Analytics (Netezza) but are unsure of the complexity of implementation. Is it a lift and shift? Is there redevelopment involved? The focus of this article is to describe the process for migrating from Oracle. At a high level this process is the same when migrating from other RDBMS but every RDBMS has its own nuances that should be taken into consideration. Read more