Cognos Case Study

Introduction Cognos is a Business Intelligence tool developed by an Ontario based company in Canada which develops business intelligence and performance management software products in which the parent organization is IBM Corporation. IBM Cognos is analytics solution software that provides an interactive for the business solutions. This is a web based and reporting as well as analytical tool which is enterprise software. Below is the list of Interview Questions mostly asked for Cognos

1. What are the features of Cognos tool?
A. The several features of Cognos tool are Templates and Style References, Tabbed Report Output, Dynamic Cubes Hardware Sizing Wizard, Active Report Live Preview, My Data Sets, Extensible Visualization Enhancements,
What is a Report Item in Cognos?
A. Reporting is the most important feature of the Cognos in the area of performance management process. It provides the path and way to the challenging business intelligence solutions. Reporting can be done using Tivoli Common Reporting feature that is provided by the business intelligence solutions of the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence version. A report item is defined as the items added to the report from the package. A report item display as the columns in the list of reports and rows and columns in the cross tab reports section.
The different types of reporting contains Cognos status and trend reports, Opening the Cognos Report Studio portal, Creating a custom Cognos report, Running a Cognos report, Scheduling and emailing a Cognos report, Sharing Cognos reports. The Cognos reports contain the statuses and trending data reports about the Tivoli Storage Manager Server and its clients. Custom Cognos reports can be created by inserting the items from the data source into any empty report. Any existing Cognos report can be opened and viewed by modifying it, or using it as the base of a new customized report.
What are the gateways used in Cognos?
A. The web communication in IBM Cognos server usually happens through gateways. There are different types of web gateways provided by the Cognos are CGI, ISAPI, Servlet, Apache mod where Common Gateway interface (CGI) which is a basic gateway. Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI is used in the Windows environment. Servlet is the best gateway for the application servers those support servlets. Apache mod is the gateway supported by the Apache Servers like Tomcat. The gateway components are managed by using IBM Cognos BI Server.
When a request is received by the IBM Cognos BI gateway server, it encrypts the passwords to always ensure the security. It also extracts the information required to submit the requests to IBM Cognos BI server. It passes the requests to IBM Cognos BI Server for dispatching and processing. It also attaches the environment variables into the Web server and also adds a default namespace to the request in order to ensure that the server always authenticates the current user in the correct namespace directory.
4. What is a Query Studio in