Advanced visualization capabilities in IBM Cognos BI: Why? What? How to?

Why Visualization Matters in Analytics World?

The world produces more than 2.5 exabytes of data every day. Visualization is one key approach to gaining insight from this mountain of data. It enables you to see the trends and patterns (along with gaps and outliers) in the data that are not as easily identified in rows and columns of numbers.

Visualization can also provide access to huge data sets, such as weather, web traffic, sales and voting records. Data sets of this size have the potential to be overwhelming and inaccessible; a good visualization provides a way to explore, understand and communicate the data, along with actions the data indicate should be taken. For example, there are visualizations that show past prices for airline tickets and prices for future travel dates. From this sort of visualization, you can see whether ticket prices are trending upwards or downwards and you have guidance when considering tickets for different possible travel dates. A list of ticket prices wouldn’t be nearly as compelling or useful as showing the price variations with graphs.

The most successful visualizations have a few things in common. They have a clear purpose; they include only relevant, focused content; and they present the content in a manner that reveals and highlights the interesting relationships in the data.

Extensible visualization capabilities in IBM Cognos BI

New, extensible visualization capabilities built into IBM Cognos Business Intelligence V10.2.1.1 solutions unleash report authors and business users from a static library of charts. No longer are users locked into only the in-product visualization options. Now you can easily augment your reports—both general and active reports—with a growing collection of visualizations to meet your data and insight requirements.

 

With the new IBM Cognos Visualization Customizer, visualizations can be edited, including changing fonts, colors, or even icons to meet the most specific requirements.

Through the new Visualization Marketplace on IBM Analytics Zone, report authors can choose from over 30 visualization options, ranging from radar charts to heat maps and area charts. New visualization options will be regularly added to the Marketplace. You’ll always find just the right visualization just a simple download away.

 

Step-by-step process to extend Cognos BI visualization features -  

First of all please make sure you have Cognos BI 10.2.1.1 server installed. If you have 10.2.1 then download and install 10.2.1.1 fixpack from IBM support site

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24036695

Now download all visualizations (vis.sample.all_10_2_1_1 .zip) along with documentations from AnalyticsZone site using below link. To do so you must be a member. If you are not then register yourself, its easy :).

https://www.analyticszone.com/homepage/web/displayMarketplacePage.action#catalog/viz_assets_allvis

The next step is to import these visualizations into Cognos library before we use them thru report studio.

1) Unzip vis.sample.all_10_2_1_1 .zip into a folder. You’ll get 30 zip files for 30 visualizations.

2) Open “IBM Cognos Administration” in browser and go to “Library” tab.

3) In left side panel you can see “Visualizations” item. On right side, click on “Import Visualizations” button as shown in below snapshot.

4) It’ll open a window where you can import all 30 or some visualization files one-by-one.

 

5) On successful import you can see all imported files. 

 

6) Now open Report Studio with any package. From toolbar you should drag “Visualization” tool in report area. Here you can see all 30 visualizations and select any one of your choice. Align data items and run the report. You can also use them in your active reports.

 

Reference:

1)      Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjpJMPay9Kg#t=12

2)      Download Visualizations - https://www.analyticszone.com/homepage/web/displayMarketplacePage.action#catalog/viz_assets_allvis

3)      Visualization Community - https://www.analyticszone.com/communities/service/html/communityview?communityUuid=03a2ed30-3407-4d0d-a7f6-340bc1d53f05

4)      White paper - Using visualization to understand big data https://www.analyticszone.com/blogs/03a2ed30-3407-4d0d-a7f6-340bc1d53f05/entry/whitepaper_using_visualization_to_understand_big_data?lang=en_us

IBM SPSS Statistics integration with Cognos BI

In today’s data-driven landscape, the ability to analyze information to drive decision-making and solve problems is fundamental for success. IBM SPSS Statistics is commonly used tool by statisticians/analytics professionals for ad hoc analysis and hypothesis testing. Rich in Extensive data preparation, analysis and visualization features, IBM SPSS Statistics provides insight into a sample of data and tools for prediction and forecasting. Generally speaking, it helps in:

• Understanding how to leverage the data collected and being able to fill in the gaps
• Understanding the underlying relationships in data from the data warehouse or various repositories and how they impact decisions
• Recognizing what influences business outcomes and to what degree by recognizing what variables drive outcomes
• Testing assumptions before applying the theory to real world events. Also when to adjust or abandon these assumptions

IBM SPSS Statistics offers the full scope of statistical and analytical capabilities that organizations require. It’s an easy-to-use, comprehensive software solution that:

1. Addresses the entire analytical process from planning and data preparation to analysis, reporting and deployment
2. Allows application of statistical information to data to improve understanding and decision quality throughout the enterprise.
3. Provides advanced analysis using statistical algorithms (for regression, correlation, segmentation etc.), and display of those results.
4. Enterprise scale and extensibility as part of the SPSS suite of products.
5. Works with all common data types, external programming languages, operating systems and file types
6. Use with Cognos BI for statistical information in reports, dashboards and scorecards.

Here in this blog I would like to focus on last bullet which says how IBM SPSS Statistics can work with IBM Cognos BI. If you are new to Cognos BI please refer my previous blog “IBM Business Intelligence Software & Its Core Capabilities”. I’ve installed IBM SPSS Statistics 22 and IBM Cognos BI 10.2.1 on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional environment.

Reading Cognos data

Lets read Cognos BI data by choosing menu “File > Read Cognos Data”

Next, Specify the URL for the Cognos server (external dispatcher URI). Description of each field is given as under.

Cognos server URL. The URL of the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence server. This is the value of the "external dispatcher URI" environment property of IBM Cognos Configuration on the server. Contact your system administrator for more information

Mode. Select Set Credentials if you need to log in with a specific namespace, username and password (for example, as an administrator). Select Use Anonymous connection to log in with no user credentials, in which case you do not fill in the other fields.

Namespace ID. The security authentication provider used to log on to the server. The authentication provider is used to define and maintain users, groups, and roles, and to control the authentication process.

User name. Enter the user name with which to log on to the server.

Password. Enter the password associated with the specified user name.

Save as Default. Saves these settings as your default, to avoid having to re-enter them each time.

 

Now, specify the location of the data package or report as shown below. 

  

And select the data fields or report that you want to read.

Optionally, you can:

• Select filters for data packages.
• Import aggregated data instead of raw data.
• Specify parameter values.

 

Once you Run and finish it, you can see the data in Statistics Data Editor. Now you are ready to work & analyze your data using SPSS statistical features.

Export Cognos Active Report

Once you are done with your analysis and ready with output, you may want to export it. Export Output saves Viewer output in HTML, text, Word/RTF, Excel, PowerPoint (requires PowerPoint 97 or later), and PDF formats. Charts can also be exported in a number of different graphics formats.

Note: Export to PowerPoint is available only on Windows operating systems and is not available in the Student Version.

To Export Output

1. Make the Viewer the active window (click anywhere in the window).
2. From the menus choose: File > Export...
3. Enter a filename (or prefix for charts) and select “Web Report (*.htm or *.mht)” as export type as shown below.

4. Now click on “Change Options” button

This Cognos Active report is now ready and  users can easily export their output with others to view & interact on smart devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android and Windows 8)

Cognos Active reports enables quick decision-making anytime and anywhere. Also users can take advantage of IBM Cognos Mobile app (available on iPad) by exporting their output as Cognos Active Report (.mht format).

IBM Cognos Active Report provides an interactive analytics experience in a self-contained Cognos Business Intelligence application for browsing and exploring data offline. Report authors can build reports targeted to users needs, keeping the user experience simple and engaging. Mobile workers can take their data with them to discover opportunities and analyze trends even when they are nowhere near a network.

Want to know more about Cognos Active Report? Please refer www.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/business-intelligence/active-report.html

Now, whatever steps we just followed above generates scripts which can be used to automate entire job. The scripting facility allows you to automate tasks, including:

• Opening and saving data files.
• Exporting charts as graphic files in a variety of formats.
• Customizing output in the Viewer.

A number of scripts are included with the software, in the Samples subdirectory of the directory where IBM SPSS Statistics is installed. You can use these scripts as they are or you can customize them to your needs. For more information on scripting and automation please refer http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/spssstat/v22r0m0/topic/com.ibm.spss.statistics.help/spss/base/scripts_overview.htm

 

References:

IBM SPSS Statistics 22 product documentation is available at:

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/spssstat/v22r0m0/

Join SPSS Community

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spssdevcentral

Cognos Active Report

www.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/business-intelligence/active-report.html