Cognos Reportnet

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Cognos ReportNet
Design by	Cognos, an IBM Company
Initial release	September, 2003
Latest release	Cognos ReportNet 1.3
OS	Multiple
Platform	Multiple
Available in	Multi-lingual
Development status	Active
Genre	Business Intelligence
Website	IBM Cognos ReportNet

Cognos ReportNet (CRN) is a web-based software product for creating and managing ad-hoc and custom-made reports. ReportNet is developed by Canada’s Ottawa based business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions company Cognos (formerly Cognos Incorporated) (TSX: CSN, NASDAQ: COGN) an IBM company. The web-based reporting tool was launched in Sep, 2003. ReportNet uses web services standards such as XML and Simple Object Access Protocol and also supports dynamic HTML and Java^[1]. ReportNet is compatible with multiple databases including Oracle, SAP, Teradata, Microsoft SQL server, DB2 and Sybase^[2][3]. Cognos ReportNet provides interface in more than 10 languages^[4], has Web Services architecture to meet the needs of multi-national, diversified enterprises and helps reduce total cost of ownership. Multiple versions of Cognos ReportNet have since been released by the company. Cognos ReportNet was awarded the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) 2005 Codie Awards for the "Best Business Intelligence or Knowledge Management Solution" category^[5]. Since the acquisition of Cognos by IBM the product has been renamed as IBM Cognos ReportNet like all other Cognos products. CRN's capabilities have been further used in Cognos8, the latest reporting tool^[6]. CRN comes with its own software development kit (SDK).

Contents 1 Launch 2 Components 3 Versions 4 Controversy 5 References

[edit] Launch

Early major customers adopting Cognos ReportNet for their corporate reporting needs include Bear Sterns, BMW and Alfred Publishing. Around this same time of launch, Cognos competitor Business Objects released version 6.1 of its enterprise reporting tool. However Cognos ReportNet has been successful since launch and helped Cognos post good revenue figures in 2004 because of licensing fees^[7]. Subsequently other major global corporations like McDonald's adopted Cognos ReportNet ^[8].

[edit] Components

• Cognos Report Studio – A Web based product for creating complex professional looking reports^[9].
• Cognos Query Studio - A Web based product for creating ad-hoc reports^[10].
• Cognos Framework Manager – A zero foot-print metadata modeling tool to create BI metadata for reporting and dashboard applications^[11].
• Cognos Connection – Main portal used to access reports, schedule reports and perform administrator activities^[12].

[edit] Versions

• Cognos ReportNet 1.1 – J2EE style professional web based authoring tool. (base version)
• Cognos ReportNet IBM Special Edition – comes with an embedded version of IBM WebSphere as its application server and IBM DB2 as its data store^[13].
• Cognos Linux – for Intel based Linux platforms^[14].

[edit] Controversy

Cognos rival Business Objects in 2005 announced that BusinessObjects XI significantly outperformed Cognos ReportNet in benchmark tests conducted by VeriTest, an independent software testing firm. The tests performed showed Cognos ReportNet performed poorly when processing styled reports, complex business reports and combination of both^[15]. The tests reported a massive 21 times higher report throughput for BusinessObjects XI than Cognos ReportNet at capacity loads^[16]. Cognos soon dismissed the claims by stating Business Objects dictated the environment and testing criteria and Cognos did not provide the software to participate in benchmark test^[17]. Cognos later performed their own test to demonstrate Cognos ReportNet capabilities^[18].

[edit] References