CoMetReporter installs a metadata reporting layer on top of IBM Cognos BI to gain extensive insight into your BI environment. CoMet gathers Framework Manager model and Cognos Connection metadata and makes it available as a reporting layer embedded in IBM Cognos. You do not need an additional front end or new skills to start analyzing your metadata.
CoMetReporter is not Cognos Audit and it’s not Extended Cognos Audit. It is fully complementary.
Impact Analysis
Business layers are usually subject to frequent changes. CoMetReporter allows you to quickly bulk analyze the impact of specific changes to your semantic layer, reports or packages. Since the CoMet reporting package is available in Cognos Connection itself, any analyst, report author
or system administrator can use it at any time without the need for additional tools or access. It is perfectly fit for self service BI as well as for agile BI development.
Data Lineage
Just like when you check dependencies between cells in Excel, CoMetReporter shows you which report items depend on which report queries, and which query items depend on which field in the database it is being sourced from. This enables you to ensure the integrity of your Cognos environment and to manage your data flows appropriately. Using CoMetReporter you can explore data lineage from the bottom to the top and back.
Prepare for migrations and upgrades
CoMetReporter is ideally suited to inventory your IBM Cognos Connection objects and to take appropriate actions in the context of migrations or cleanups. CoMetReporter helps you to manage pitfalls and to take control of your Cognos environment. You will find out the ins and outs of your
user’s daily activities in the Cognos Connection portal in order to anticipate on migration issues and to smoothen the upgrade process
Who is the target audience?
CometReporter is intended for:
- Cognos BI system administrators;
- business analysts;
- Framework Manager modelers;
- and report authors.
What can we use it for?
When working in Cognos Connection within an intensively used environment, we are often faced with questions regarding the metadata of reports, folders, views, and all other objects within Cognos Connection. These are questions we ask ourselves every day, but Cognos does not offer an easy to use and straightforward way of answering them. We need to browse through the portal, open different screens, and view the properties one by one to find answers. Using CoMetReporter however you can easily browse through the metadata of Cognos Connection and all its objects using for instance Query Studio!
Examples of the things we are looking for in Cognos Connection:
- Which reports/jobs are scheduled when?
- Which output formats are being used?
- Which reports are bursted?
- Which reports are being mailed? To whom?
- Where do report views reside for which reports?
- How do packages link to reports?
- Which reports fail when being executed?
- You want to keep track of report execution time beyond the track of Cognos?
- …
A business analyst or Cognos report author can have questions regarding the reports hosted on the Cognos system. Next questions can pop up when modifying reports, changing the model, looking for objects and items used in reports etc.:
- Which data items are used in a report?
- Which hyperlinks, images are being used?
- Which filters are being used on which reports?
- What calculations are being used?
- Which prompts are being used?
- How do data items map back to the model?
- …
Besides all the metadata related to your Cognos Connection environment, CoMetReporter also extracts, transforms and loads the Framework Manager model’s metadata. This way you are able to report on items used in your model and you can automate specific documentation tasks:
- Automatically generate a mapping starting from the database layer, over the business layer to the presentation layer within your Framework Manager model up to data items used within a report.
- Perform bulk impact analysis when modifying your semantic layer.
- Automate release notes when publishing a new package to production by comparing the current version against the previous version.
- Create a package structure report for easy discussion with the business users about how the package should be structured in a logical way.
- …
Semantic Layer entities currently supported in CoMetReporter
Cognos connection
- Folders
- Report Studio Reports
- Query Studio Reports
- Jobs
- Portalpages
- Schedules
- Shortcuts
- URLs
- Run History
- Report Run History
Framework Manager
- Model objects
- Datasources
- Query Items
- Query Subjects
- Calculations
- Filters
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Technical Features
Runs on
- Windows XP
- Windows Server 2000
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Server 2008
Supported Cognos Versions
- Cognos BI 8.x
- Cognos BI 10.x
Supported databases for storing the data
- SQL Server
- Oracle
RAM Required
- 2x size XML file being parsed
CoMetReporter connects using ODBC to the CoMetReporter’s database. It can be scheduled using the command line for use in scripts, other applications, batch files, etc.