Sunday, April 4, 2010

IBM Business View Point - One version of truth

Why has Cognos not thought of a central metadata management that allows dimensions and models to be re-used across Framework Manager, PowerPlay Transformer, Planning Analyst, Cognos NOW and others?


Why can’t we create all the required dimensions with hierarchies and levels with the required attributes in one central location and deploy as need be? Well Just as I was working on this paper, Cognos 8.4 has already delivered a solution to some of my questions.

The answer is IBM Cognos 8 Business View Point.

IBM Cognos 8 Business Viewpoint Client provides you with the ability to nominate, subscribe to, and update master dimensions between IBM Cognos Planning - Analyst, IBM Cognos Planning - Contributor Administration Console, IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Cognos Transformer, and IBM Cognos Controller into Business Viewpoint Studio.

The above description provided by Cognos has 2 catches.

Catch1:

It is a Client tool, guess something like Framework Manager, so much for zero foot printing :-(. What this means is, we will need Admin privileges, Client installations and maintenance, Training and documentation, certified individuals, multiple requests to IT for providing multiple views. :-)

Catch2:

Business Viewpoint doesn’t talk about integrating Framework Manager. This takes me back to my question, why can’t we have a single, centralized metadata management that includes not just Dimensions but also tables, models, namespaces, query subjects and all.

Good news

- We can re use dimensions across multiple Cognos applications

- We can create “Views” of dimensions. This will help any business with dynamic, frequently changing dimension hierarchies. For example, HR hierarchies that constantly change, marketing managers who have to simultaneously work with multiple set of hierarchies across multiple locations

- Rework your hierarchies in MS Excel (can we live without this? ever?) and export them back to Viewpoint.

- It has in built change management, audit and version control with roll back features

If you want to watch a Business viewpoint promotional slick, click on this link.

http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/data/sw-library/cognos/demos/od_business_viewpoint/index.html