Union queries are the most common design pattern I see in Cognos Analytics reports. A fledgling report author will encounter a challenging problem and, one way or another, find a way to solve it with a union query. Brimming with justified confidence, they will apply this technique to increasingly complex data riddles with some success. Unfortunately as the number of Cognos union queries goes up, the performance and supportability of the report goes down fast. Years of consulting have taught me that excessive unions are a surefire sign of a developer in need of some coaching. Well Coach Ryan is ..read more

Relative Dates are a powerful feature of Cognos Analytics data modules that enable quick and flexible comparisons between time periods. For example, comparing revenue for the current year version the previous year, or the current week of the month vs the same week last month. These comparisons are popular across all lines of business but especially in the office of finance, which relies on period over period analytics as a bedrock of analysis. The video below covers how to set up and use relative dates in Cognos Analytics. Live demonstration of relative date functionality in Cognos Analytics ..read more

It’s that time of year again – time for the Gartner BI Magic Quadrant. Like a bad ex who just won’t back off, Gartner drops their annual market warping report around Valentine’s Day to ruin the mood. I’ve expressed strong opinions in the past about Gartner’s report and methodology and this year will be no different. Put simply, they did Cognos Analytics dirty again while rewarding some competitors based on evaluation criteria that have nothing to do with the capabilities or quality of the software. In particular I argue that: Gartner heavily weights the number of inquires each tool generates ..read more

Getting Started Logging in and creating a folder for your work Because of high interest in today’s session we are using a single 96 core 768 GB RAM Cognos server with anonymous access allowed. This makes logistics much easier but means we don’t have access to the ‘My content’ feature of Cognos. Click here to access Cognos: http://3.216.29.72:9300/ Click ‘Team content’ and navigate to the ‘BACon Users’ folder. Click the ‘+’ button in the navigation window and select ‘Folder’. Give your folder a name with the following format: Initials – favorite movie – favorite color. In my case it would be ..read more

Cognos Analytics 11.1.6 is live! This release features a ton of great quality of life enhancements. Chief among them is a great dashboard UI refresh, a new interactive data table in report authoring and some very welcome changes to data modules. There are also some shifts in IBMs design language with refreshed icons, and a great new ‘help’ section that pulls support directly into the Cognos UI. Overall I feel this is a strong release. So let’s take a look at what’s new in Cognos Analytics 11.1.6. Cognos Analytics 11.1.6 UI and usability updates Cognos Analytics 11.1.6 brings two changes to the ..read more

I introduced you to Cognos Data Sets in Part 1 of this series and you recognize some intriguing possibilities. You want the massively improved performance, simple presentation for end users and quick road to Cognos modernization that Data Sets offer, but you’re not sure how to start. Well I’m here to help you understand when to use Cognos Data Sets – how to recognize each situation and how Data Sets help. Prepare Data for Advanced Analytics Advanced Analytics require high quality data to function properly Advanced Analytics features like forecasting in Cognos often work much better with Data S ..read more

Cognos Data Modules are a web-based data acquisition, blending and modeling feature available in Cognos Analytics. They first hit the scene as part of Cognos 11 and are meant to supplement and eventually replace Framework Manager for both self-service and IT data modeling needs. I’ll pause for a second to let you long-time Cognoids hyperventilate a little… is everyone back? Good. Through this and subsequent posts I’ll try to dispel misconceptions about this awesome feature of Cognos while making you comfortable and – dare I say – excited to use them. Data modules – the wave of the futureData M ..read more

I’ve explored Data Modules in depth on this blog over the last year with the hope of showing you how awesome data modeling in Cognos Analytics can be if you really embrace it. There is, however, an additional piece of the Cognos data puzzle that you need to understand to unlock the full potential of the platform – the Data Set. So let’s answer the question – just what are Cognos Data Sets? The IBM Blueview Data Set Series What are Cognos Data Sets? When to use Cognos Data Sets What is a Data Set in Cognos? Data Sets offer an in-memory data processing option for Cognos Analytics Simply put, a D ..read more

Be sure to check out an updated version of this blog post for the 2021 Magic Quadrant here! Another February brings another edition of everyone’s favorite yearly head scratcher – the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence! I have expressed some strong opinions on the worth of the Magic Quadrant as a tool for decision makers in the past and this year will be no different. As always I strongly urge you to read the report rather than just rely on the picture as (once again) vendor positioning on the scatter plot feels extremely disconnected from the analysis contained below it. So let’s ..read more

This is actually a sequel one of the very first blog posts I ever wrote for blueview. While a lot has changed since 2015 understanding the difference between Compatible Query Mode and Dynamic Query Mode is still crucial. With the addition of data sets running on the compute service (aka ‘Flint’) things are even more complicated. My goal for this article is the run back the clock, peel back the onion and give you a historical, technical and practical understanding of the 3 Cognos query modes. Buckle up folks, this is going to get wild. There are many query engines hidden beneath the hood of you ..read more