Cognos Inc. is one of the leading suppliers of BI technology, and its Cognos Impromptu has been a popular tool for workgroup-based ad hoc reporting. Now the company is offering ReportNet, its next-generation report publishing and management product. This new product takes many of the best features found in other leading report management products, combines them into a single package, and adds a simplified UI design.

ReportNet includes a server, an ad hoc reporting tool, a report development tool, a data modeling and management tool, and a Web portal. With the exception of the data management tool, all the ReportNet components are delivered via zero-footprint Web browsers and are managed by the ReportNet server.

The Best of Both

Until ReportNet, reporting solutions could be divided into two general categories: production reporting and ad hoc reporting and analysis. Production reporting solutions serve a market need for high-volume, high-reliability, customized report production for applications such as billing and account statements. Ad hoc reporting and analysis serve a different market that requires flexible data investigation and calculation for applications such as product performance analysis and sales commission analysis. ReportNet is the first reporting solution that provides equivalently strong support for the needs of both production and ad hoc reporting users. (Cognos continues to offer Impromptu for department report writers who want an ad hoc tool.)

Businesses will see a lower cost of ownership with ReportNet. Previously, two or more reporting products and multiple instances were required to cover production reporting and ad hoc analysis. Now, one product, ReportNet, supports these two activities. Also, as smaller reporting applications expand, businesses won't need to overcome scalability issues by switching from small-scale reporting solutions to larger, more enterprise-focused products, eliminating unexpected product switching costs.

Speaking My Language

A single report server that can support multiple languages simultaneously is a business advantage that other reporting systems have overlooked to date. Until now, multiple report instances and server instances were required to support multiple languages, but ReportNet is unique in its built-in support for serving the same report to multiple users in multiple languages. On-the-fly language conversion facilities for metadata, form labels and options, report object labeling, and data itself are built into ReportNet. Furthermore, localization can be keyed from the user's browser settings, so that language conversion for ReportNet requires no specific user-driven configuration.

Multinational companies can potentially decrease the cost of ownership significantly with language conversion. ReportNet is initially available with localization for English, French, German, and Japanese. The product also includes a Localization Kit for any other languages not currently supported.

With the Web in Mind

From the start, Cognos designed ReportNet reports to be viewed via Web browsers and other HTML viewers. Cognos avoided adaptation side effects found in other reporting architectures designed prior to Web browsers. For example, placement of data, text, calculations, and other objects on a report page with other, older report technologies requires developers to painstakingly align their locations horizontally. If any of the placed objects overflow their allotted space on the document, they either overlap their neighbors or are truncated. Compensating for these issues often forces report developers to spend a large amount of the time creating a report's presentation.

ReportNet follows a different layout paradigm. Leveraging layout capabilities of HTML tables, developers can assign object locations relative to each other, so that as objects expand, their location boundaries automatically expand, shifting neighbors aside as required. Developers don't have to worry about overlaps or truncation. Time is saved, and developers are more productive.

Another time-consuming aspect of report development is designing the report controls. Various HTML forms let users enter parameters that customize the queries that then populate the report's data and control the report's presentation. These controls can be either presented to the user prior to the report or as part of the report's layout to enable further interaction. ReportNet streamlines the implementation of these controls in several ways. First, report controls are represented as objects in the report development palette, letting developers easily drag and drop report controls as needed from their Web browsers. (See Figure 1.)

Second, ReportNet reports can have multiple pages, one of which can be a parameterization page, which is presented to the user prior to displaying the data. Next, a variety of prompt types can be added to a report including select lists, searchable lists, time and date prompts (including intervals), and automatically generated, context-sensitive prompts, which adapt based upon a prior prompt selection. Finally, prompts can be populated using predefined queries. Taking all these capabilities together, ReportNet makes the creation, population, automation, and deployment of parameterization prompts simple and fast.