Cognos 8 a Hit With Users

Integration is just the tip of the spear, some users say. After all, Cognos’ ReportNet turns two this month—an eternity in the technology world. And even though Cognos refreshed that product with a 1.1 release, the new Cognos 8 BI suite fixes several of the revamped ReportNet’s shortcomings, too. “To do drilling in ReportNet 1.1, you had to create two reports, and then you’d drill through from one report to the other. You create a summary report, and then you create a drill report and then you connect them through drilling,” explains David Wheat, manager of decision support systems with United Agri Products. “[But in Cognos 8] you can set up drill paths at the metadata layer: you define them once, and then ReportNet can enable those or disable [them]. The drill-up and drill-down capability is far more advanced than it was in 1.1; we can choose if we want to do the metadata layer, and have the data be aware that there’s a drilling option.”