I've been mandated to find out what IBM Cognos does, and I cannot find useful information on the subject apart what I can read from the IBM Website and Wikipedia.
What I'm after is some concrete examples of what Cognos can do for businesses and organisations that intend to use it.
A little late but in case anyone else comes here and is looking for information, I would like to enhance @paxdiablo's answer. He was talking only about Modeling and reporting tool which is the best known Cognos.
There is also a powerful tool named Metric Studio which can track in an easy way, how business is performing. This tool is IMHO the best of the Cognos Suite, since it is truly BI for the high management.
Another thing that I love from Cognos (been using it since 2004) is the administration. From an IT perspective it is way easier to make things happen in Cognos rather than any other tool I've seen (BO included).
Just to name a few: you can link row-filtering with LDAP information (e.g. roles and customers); burst reporting through cognos content or email... the possibilities are huge.
Financial Performance Management I have no idea about but we use BI 8.4/10.1 quite a bit. The Cognos product line is actually quite large and we only really use the baseline BI stuff with Framework Manager but I'll try and help you out, based on how we use it.
Think of BI itself as an application that lets you view your data in many different ways. Now so far, it's no different to Jasper Reports or BIRT (which, despite its name, appears to provide very little BI stuff).
It does this by modelling the data (models are created with Framework Manager hence why we use it over and above the standard reporting interface) to translate raw data into business data and also relational to dimensional data if your database isn't already dimensional.
It's this business view of the data combined with the dimensionality which allows really neat manipulation within Cognos BI.
You can create reports in a truly multi-dimensional way, aggregating data in various ways across things like dates, products, geographical regions, stores, divisions and so on (depending on your dimensional setup).
All of the reports are really dynamic in that you can collapse or expand individual dimensions at will so, if for example you want to drill down on a poorly-performing state to see which individual stores in that state are causing problems, it's a simple click on an icon.
No re-querying of the data, everything just happens in very quick time. And the charts and data that can be produced are very nice.
And, on top of that, Cognos BI comes with an inbuilt query studio and report studio which allow the creation of ad-hoc reports in the exact same interface the user sees when running standard reports. No more of the Eclipse-Designer/Web-App separation that we had to endure with BIRT.
Sorry if this sounds evangelistic but we're transitioning from BIRT to Cognos BI, and the difference is substantial.
Now you may not find a lot of information outside of the IBM website, although we did find a couple of dedicated sites when we first started examining the transition. Unfortunately, I don't have them available any more since the IBM information is more than adequate.
A bit late, but for the benefit of anyone browsing ... Cognos BI is essentially web based reporting/ dashboarding/ analytics. Historically it connected to relational databases only; from v8.4 onwards (and moreso from v10) it also connects to OLAP cube data sources. It's designed for end user self service reporting and includes mobile as well as web connectivity.
Cognos FPM provides in-server memory OLAP cube modelling (based on the TM1 engine). A key point of difference is that it permits end-user writeback and is generally used for budgeting and 'what-if' scenario modelling. Modelling is facilitated by Rules, which enable data modification. It also scales to the max. As noted above it may be integrated to Cognos BI (as well as being stand-alone), which means that a single dashboard may include reports from both relational & OLAP sources, and provide planning. So it's very powerful.
Note that Cognos Express provides essentially the same tools for the midmarket.
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有点晚了，但以防万一其他人来到这里并正在寻找信息，我想增强@paxdiablo 的答案。他只谈论最著名的 Cognos 建模和报告工具。
还有一个名为 Metric Studio 的强大工具，可以轻松跟踪业务表现。恕我直言，这个工具是 Cognos Suite 中最好的工具，因为它是真正适合高级管理人员的 BI。
我喜欢 Cognos 的另一件事（自 2004 年以来一直使用它）是管理。从 IT 角度来看，在 Cognos 中完成任务比我见过的任何其他工具（包括 BO）要容易得多。
仅举几例：您可以将行过滤与 LDAP 信息（例如角色和客户）链接起来；通过 Cognos 内容或电子邮件进行突发报告...可能性是巨大的。
A little late but in case anyone else comes here and is looking for information, I would like to enhance @paxdiablo's answer. He was talking only about Modeling and reporting tool which is the best known Cognos.
There is also a powerful tool named Metric Studio which can track in an easy way, how business is performing. This tool is IMHO the best of the Cognos Suite, since it is truly BI for the high management.
Another thing that I love from Cognos (been using it since 2004) is the administration. From an IT perspective it is way easier to make things happen in Cognos rather than any other tool I've seen (BO included).
Just to name a few: you can link row-filtering with LDAP information (e.g. roles and customers); burst reporting through cognos content or email... the possibilities are huge.
财务绩效管理我不知道，但我们经常使用 BI 8.4/10.1。 Cognos 产品线实际上相当大，我们只在 Framework Manager 中真正使用基线 BI 内容，但我会根据我们使用它的方式尽力帮助您。
将 BI 本身视为一个应用程序，可让您以多种不同方式查看数据。到目前为止，它与 Jasper Reports 或 BIRT 没有什么不同（尽管它的名字如此，但似乎只提供很少的 BI 东西）。
它通过对数据进行建模（模型是使用 Framework Manager 创建的，因此我们在标准报告界面之上使用它）来将原始数据转换为业务数据，并且如果您的数据库还没有维度，则还与维度数据相关。
正是这种数据的业务视图与维度相结合，才允许在 Cognos BI 中进行真正简洁的操作。
您可以以真正的多维方式创建报告，以各种方式聚合数据，如日期、产品、地理区域、商店、部门等（取决于您的维度设置）。
所有报告都是真正动态的，因为您可以随意折叠或展开各个维度，因此，例如，如果您想深入了解表现不佳的州，以查看该州中哪些单独的商店导致了问题，只需单击一下即可在一个图标上。
无需重新查询数据，一切都会很快发生。而且可以生成的图表和数据都非常好。
除此之外，Cognos BI 还配备了内置的查询工作室和报表工作室，允许在用户运行标准报表时看到的完全相同的界面中创建临时报表。对于 BIRT，我们不再需要忍受 Eclipse-Designer/Web-App 分离。
抱歉，如果这听起来很福音，但我们正在从 BIRT 过渡到 Cognos BI，而且差异是巨大的。
现在，您可能在 IBM 网站之外找不到很多信息，尽管我们在第一次开始检查过渡时确实找到了几个专用网站。不幸的是，我不再拥有它们，因为 IBM 的信息已经足够了。
我们还大量使用 IBM DeveloperWorks 论坛（我们使用 Tivoli随 Cognos 运行时一起提供的通用报告）和微型网站 也是如此。除了论坛之外，还有 developerWorks 的整个部分致力于 Cognos。
Financial Performance Management I have no idea about but we use BI 8.4/10.1 quite a bit. The Cognos product line is actually quite large and we only really use the baseline BI stuff with Framework Manager but I'll try and help you out, based on how we use it.
Think of BI itself as an application that lets you view your data in many different ways. Now so far, it's no different to Jasper Reports or BIRT (which, despite its name, appears to provide very little BI stuff).
It does this by modelling the data (models are created with Framework Manager hence why we use it over and above the standard reporting interface) to translate raw data into business data and also relational to dimensional data if your database isn't already dimensional.
It's this business view of the data combined with the dimensionality which allows really neat manipulation within Cognos BI.
You can create reports in a truly multi-dimensional way, aggregating data in various ways across things like dates, products, geographical regions, stores, divisions and so on (depending on your dimensional setup).
All of the reports are really dynamic in that you can collapse or expand individual dimensions at will so, if for example you want to drill down on a poorly-performing state to see which individual stores in that state are causing problems, it's a simple click on an icon.
No re-querying of the data, everything just happens in very quick time. And the charts and data that can be produced are very nice.
And, on top of that, Cognos BI comes with an inbuilt query studio and report studio which allow the creation of ad-hoc reports in the exact same interface the user sees when running standard reports. No more of the Eclipse-Designer/Web-App separation that we had to endure with BIRT.
Sorry if this sounds evangelistic but we're transitioning from BIRT to Cognos BI, and the difference is substantial.
Now you may not find a lot of information outside of the IBM website, although we did find a couple of dedicated sites when we first started examining the transition. Unfortunately, I don't have them available any more since the IBM information is more than adequate.
We also make a lot of use of the IBM developerWorks forums (we use Tivoli Common Reporting which ships with the Cognos runtimes) and the microsite as well. As well as the forums, there's a whole section of developerWorks dedicated to Cognos.
有点晚了，但为了任何浏览者的利益……Cognos BI 本质上是基于 Web 的报告/仪表板/分析。从历史上看，它仅连接到关系数据库；从 v8.4 开始（从 v10 开始更是如此），它还连接到 OLAP 多维数据集数据源。它专为最终用户自助报告而设计，包括移动和网络连接。
Cognos FPM 提供服务器内内存 OLAP 多维数据集建模（基于 TM1 引擎）。一个关键的区别是它允许最终用户写回，并且通常用于预算和“假设”场景建模。规则促进了建模，支持数据修改。它还可以扩展到最大。如上所述，它可以集成到 Cognos BI（以及独立的），这意味着单个仪表板可以包含来自关系和数据的报告。 OLAP 来源，并提供规划。所以它非常强大。
请注意，Cognos Express 为中端市场提供了基本相同的工具。
A bit late, but for the benefit of anyone browsing ... Cognos BI is essentially web based reporting/ dashboarding/ analytics. Historically it connected to relational databases only; from v8.4 onwards (and moreso from v10) it also connects to OLAP cube data sources. It's designed for end user self service reporting and includes mobile as well as web connectivity.
Cognos FPM provides in-server memory OLAP cube modelling (based on the TM1 engine). A key point of difference is that it permits end-user writeback and is generally used for budgeting and 'what-if' scenario modelling. Modelling is facilitated by Rules, which enable data modification. It also scales to the max. As noted above it may be integrated to Cognos BI (as well as being stand-alone), which means that a single dashboard may include reports from both relational & OLAP sources, and provide planning. So it's very powerful.
Note that Cognos Express provides essentially the same tools for the midmarket.