IBM Cognos PowerPlay

Fact Sheet

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IBM Cognos PowerPlay lets you analyze critical corporate data from any angle, in any combination. Quickly grasp business issues, manage performance, and focus your actions through the strength of multidimensional analysis.

MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS

Corporate data is complex. To learn from it and act on it, we need analysis tools that can make sense of it. Online analytical processing (OLAP) is a powerful means of extracting maximum value from corporate data through multidimensional analysis. We naturally think about our businesses in terms of dimensions such as time periods, products, customers, and locations. We track measures such as revenue, profitability, and customer retention. By organizing information into dimensions and measures, OLAP lets us follow trends in a customer realm; spot anomalies across products; compare annual sales in a region by product line or customer type; even test a strategic plan. With OLAP, details are placed in context; the big picture is supported by the data.

IBM COGNOS POWERPLAY: THE BEST-SELLING OLAP SOLUTION

IBM Cognos Powerplay is the world’s best-selling OLAP software because of its:

• Ease of use.
• Large variety of features.
• Fast response time.
• Scalability to thousands of users.

IBM Cognos PowerPlay draws information from relational databases to model and build PowerCubes®. Cubes are data sets that can contain tens of millions of consolidated rows of data and hundreds of thousands of categories (members). Business rules and calculations (percentage growth and market share change, for example) can be built right into them, and time series analysis is delivered automatically. Web, Windows, and Excel clients can all receive cubes and reports from the same application server.

Besides conventional OLAP features such as drill-down, slice-and-dice, ranking, sorting, and nesting, IBM Cognos PowerPlay features:

• Zero-footprint web interface: Users only need a browser on their machine to use drag and drop, right-click, flyouts, and row/column selection to simplify tasks such as exception highlighting, alert creation, or calculations. View a cube’s dimensions and measures in a tree structure to understand the data structure and find items you need. (Available with IE 5.5 and above.)
  
  
• Graphical analysis: Choose from a wide range of graphical displays.
  
  
• Drill-through: From within published reports or cubes, drill through to related reports and cubes with one click. Drill through from summarized OLAP information to underlying transactional detail in other Cognos reporting products. Target destinations can be controlled by the level in the dimensional hierarchy— allowing users to get to the most relevant information in a way that is efficient for system resources. Drill-through is supported from Cognos PowerCubes as well as from third-party data sources such as Microsoft, Essbase, SAP BW, and IBM DB2 OLAP.
  
  
• Pareto filtering: The 80/20 filter automatically groups all categories that amount to less than 20 per cent of a row or column total into an “Other” category.
  
  
• Exception highlighting: See values above or below a designated range with automatic exception highlighting.
  
  
• Subsets: Create the logical groupings of information that you require, based on criteria that you choose, such as pattern matches and value thresholds.
  
  
• Scenario dimensions: Scenario dimensions are useful when analyzing financial data. Instead of calculating just one set of figures, it is possible to include several sets of figures, or scenarios. Each scenario is based on different assumptions, such as planned, budget, and actual values or best case and worst case. Scenario dimensions do not roll up to a single root category, since that number would not be meaningful.
  
  
• Projections: Forecast a trend by extending current time-based data forward a designated number of periods.

SCALABLE SERVER ARCHITECTURE

• One server, three services: IBM Cognos PowerPlay is a multi-tier server architecture with one common, universal application server—PowerPlay Enterprise Server (PPES)— and three services—Web, Windows client, and Excel clients. PPES runs on heterogeneous Windows NT, HP-UX, IBM AIX and Sun Solaris platforms. Server components can reside on one or separate machines. PPES, currently in its fourth release, is founded on customer-proven architecture.
  
  
• Network efficiency: PPES processes and summarizes data in the application layer and only returns summarized results, conserving bandwidth and optimizing network performance. Users start with the highest-level information, and then perform trend and top-down analyses, minimizing queries and data mart accesses.
  
  
• High performance: PPES processes queries and stores the results in the server cache. New queries are served from this cache when possible, speeding up query time and increasing throughput.

OPEN OLAP TECHNOLOGY

• Universal OLAP: PowerPlay front-ends leading third-party OLAP servers. Link any combination of PowerCubes and cubes from Microsoft OLAP Services, SAP BW, Hyperion Essbase, and IBM OLAP for DB2 into a deployed Cognos solution without additional development.
• Cube creation API: IBM Cognos PowerPlay transformation engine (Transformer) is the Cognos data modeling and cube creation tool that reads and handles source data from all major databases and in all major file formats. Access Transformer through a GUI or automate through an open API.

FLEXIBLE DESIGN ENVIRONMENT

• Easy, fast, robust design: IBM Cognos PowerPlay’s drag-and-drop design environment lets you quickly define dimensions, levels, categories (members), measures and other multidimensional data structures visually. Transformer detects and suggests hierarchical structures automatically, and verifies the integrity of data elements specified as unique identifiers. Three months will typically take your system from inception to production and ROI.
  
  
• Advanced multidimensional modeling: Transformer leverages the star and snowflake schemas that dominate today’s warehouse landscape and provides advanced multidimensional modeling capabilities. Here are some examples:
  
  • Time-dependent processing that goes beyond straight year/quarter/month reporting. IBM Cognos PowerPlay models relative time data, such as month-to-month and year-over-year, QTD, YTD, and custom time periods such as 13-month years.
  • Alternate drill paths in a single dimension that provide different perspectives on the same data—view HR data by region, then by job function, for example.
  • Distinct category counts that handle market basket and survey requirements. For example, see how many unique customers made purchases within a series of transactions.
  • Time-based partitioned PowerCubes that permit much faster cube updates by letting you incrementally update data into separate time-based Powercubes (such as monthly) that can be viewed as a single structure.

SUPERIOR MANAGEABILITY

• Build cubes fast, on any platform, from any source: Transformer’s native support for all data sources allows cubes to integrate data from disparate databases, and ensures fast access while building large cubes of up to one billion rows of consolidated data and two million categories. Automatic partitioning optimizes the way data is written to PowerCubes, and platform independence lets you leverage your existing environment.
  
  
• Comprehensive logging and check points: Designers can define the level of logging that occurs during PowerCube builds and easily monitor cube build status. PowerCube administrators can also configure checkpoints so that cube builds can be efficiently restarted in case of hardware problems.
  
  
• Automated cube builds: Using Transformer’s Model Definition Language, designers can automate cube updates with a fully documented, open API. On Windows, designers can build cubes using OLE Automation.
  
  
• Security: Based on user classes, administrators can restrict access to measures, whole or partial dimensions, or NewsBoxes in the Upfront portal. In large installations, you can manage user and user class security definitions in batch mode.

COGNOS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: FOR THE INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE
Cognos business intelligence (BI) delivers the information framework that lets anyone in your organization understand your corporate performance—from any angle and to any depth. It lets you communicate the results—whether business as usual or breakthrough insight. It can even notify you if a critical event occurs, wherever you may be.

Build a solution using Cognos BI components or purchase a pre-built solution. Either way, ease of use and deployment, combined with user self-service, means you’re up and running quickly and seeing ROI faster than you imagined. All Cognos BI components feature:

• Centralized security: A single LDAP-based component delivers seamless, secure access for all users inside and outside the firewall in conjunction with your own user authentication and security systems. IT can manage user profiles and classes for all Cognos components through centralized SSL security.
  
  
• Zero-footprint web deployment: Users access information in pure html using their web browser, making Java applets or proprietary plug-ins unnecessary. Share strategic information over a secure extranet with partners, suppliers, customers, and a mobile sales force with the bandwidth-saving benefit of a stateless environment.
  
  
• Scalability: Cognos BI has been tested and proven scalable to tens of thousands of users through load balancing and a distributed architecture supporting Unix and Windows.
  
  
• Central administration: Manage all BI applications from one central console, or distribute management among departments or locations. Control request processing at the server, application, PowerCube, and report level. Monitor throughput across multiple servers at a glance and fine-tune multi-server environments. The platform-independent, remote Java administrator program lets you administer any server from any machine.
  
  
• Shared metadata: Create and manage all BI metadata and business rules in a single metadata model based on shared dimensions. This model provides a consistent enterprise data view with minimum development effort. The SQL-based environment ensures the metadata is optimized for each BI application.
  
  
• Extensible BI: Using our open API based on a web services architecture, IT can integrate BI directly into third party portals or specialized web applications. The software’s shared data foundation and integrated, modular approach means it can be easily implemented in steps across the entire enterprise. It can grow as the business grows, while reusing existing technology investments to save on costs.
  
  
• Local language, local currency: Localized product versions let users work in their own language and view figures in their own currency, using regional settings— all from a single application server.

IBM COGNOS POWERPLAY TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Windows 98
• Windows 2000
• Windows NT 4.0
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2003

• Excel 97
• Excel 2000
• Excel XP
• Excel 2003

• Netscape Navigator 4.76, 7.0
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x and above

• In addition to Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 4 recommended) and Windows Server 2003, the following UNIX platforms are supported:
• HP-UX 11.0+
• IBM AIX
• Sun Solaris (Sparc)

IBM Cognos PowerPlay Transformer Edition
IBM Cognos PowerPlay Transformer supports the following platforms for building cubes:

• Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 4
• Windows 98, 2000, NT, XP, and
• Windows Server 2003
• Sun Solaris (Sparc) 2.5+
• HP-UX 10.20+
• IBM AIX 4.2+
• Compaq Tru64 UNIX 4.0D

Visit our support site for the most current conformance information

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