Cognos 7 Business Intelligence applications overview
Cognos Series 7
The main Cognos Series 7 Business Intelligence applications:
Cognos PowerPlay - multidimensional analysis and OLAP reporting software. PowerPlay is available in a couple of versions: PowerPlay Web, PowerPlay Client and PowerPlay for Microsoft Excel.
Cognos PowerPlay windows Client application has more features available than PowerPlay Web Explorer.
Powerplay Enterpise Server is used to deploy cubes to the Cognos 7 WebPortal and also Cognos 8
Cognos PowerPlay Transformer is an application used to generate and update PowerCubes which are distributed to the end users
PowerPlay Connect - an application which manages connections to Cognos OLAP source or any of the supported OLAP servers (Hyperion Essbase, IBM DB2 OLAP, Microsoft Analysis Services, local Microsoft .cub files, SAP BW)
Cognos Impromptu - software for advanced reporting
Metrics Manager - scorecarding software
Notice Cast - event management application which runs in the background
The data model and flow of the data in Cognos is as follows:
Analyze and define the data structure in source systems
Use PowerPlay Transformer to connect to one or more sources of data and build multidimensional models
Create the Cognos PowerCubes in Transformer and distribute those multidimensional models (and/or use PowerPlay Enterprise Server for distribution and to apply security to the OLAP cubes)
View the distributed PowerCubes using Cognos PowerPlay for Windows, PowerPlay for Excel, Powerplay Web or Cognos Visualizer
Cognos PowerPlay vs Analysis Studio - A comparison of cognos 7 PowerPlay and Cognos 8 Analysis Studio with an overview of the major differencies and features of each product