By Rick Ryan, Envisn, Inc.
This blog article is the first in a series of articles on this subject. It’s not something that has been explored in depth to our knowledge and deserves move coverage. Our focus will be on the breadth and depth of Cognos metadata, and more importantly, how it can be used to address issues that Cognos administrators and developers face on a daily basis. These will be in depth examples of Cognos Metadata and its use.
One thing we felt a need to do at the outset is to create a metadata topology to bring some structure to what we’ll be talking about. In the figure below we have identified four main groups of Cognos metadata.
The Groups:
- Content Store Data – Represents reports, queries, FM models, packages, etc. Things that the Content Store was designed to hold and for users to work with.
- Data Sources – External data representing what Cognos was designed to work with such as databases, namespaces, distribution lists, etc.
- Security Data – This in a sense is a hybrid of the first two groups since it represents mapping namespace data and capabilities to object data. Given its complexity it warrants its own category.
- Deep Cognos Data – This category provides virtually endless possibilities. It’s capable of providing answers to almost any question about Cognos no matter how complex or detailed.
One could debate what should be part of this topology of the Cognos metadata Universe. Some might say that it should only be data that is directly part of Cognos itself or created by it. This view is too narrow since it leaves out some key data elements that are part of the Cognos world. Things such as databases, namespaces, distribution lists, etc. And more importantly, this metadata is as important as what gets generated by Cognos itself.
What we’ll we doing:
- Identifying all of the metadata in the Cognos universe.
- Describing where it comes from and how it’s made available (up to a point).
- The importance of a data plan or architecture for both accessing and using the metadata.
- Providing use case examples of how it can be used in helping administrators and developers do their jobs supporting Cognos users.
- Sharing learnings and insight into Cognos metadata and its use.
A key element of our process in this exploration will be starting with what’s already available through Cognos and what you have to uncover on your own. That will be the subject of the next blog in this series.
