Integrating with Cognos
IBM® Sterling Order Management System is integrated with Cognos such that you can generate operational reports with low data volume for your short-term analysis.
Sterling Order Management System uses a multi-tenant implementation of Cognos on Cloud. Unbounded or non-performing SQL queries that are generated by using Cognos can impact client operations and can risk the environment stability. Therefore, IBM Cognos® Analytics supports report generation on a daily or weekly basis depending on the data volume.
Writing direct SQL queries within Cognos is not permitted.
Cognos provides an ability to create custom SQL inside the report studio. However, this option is not available as part of the integration with Sterling Order Management System. IBM Cognos Analytics ensures the stability and scalability of the Sterling Order Management System application. Cognos reports must be run against a data model per Cognos best practices. Model queries are further optimized by Cognos with an internal limit on the number of records that can be retrieved. Custom SQL queries do not have these guardrails and are therefore unavailable in the Cognos on Cloud environments for Sterling Order Management System.By default, IBM Cognos Analytics on Cloud can be used to generate reports for low data volume by using the Cloud Service data within the limits of the Cloud Service. You must use IBM Cognos Analytics for operational reporting and not as an analytical tool.
A data model is provided by default, which contains a subset of most commonly used transactional tables and some configuration tables. You can use these models to run your reports. If you need more tables from the database or the application tables contain extended columns, you can extend the model. For more information, see Extending the Operational Reporting Data Model.
You can run the sample reports for a maximum of 7-day period.
- To run the reports, the user must belong to the BI_USER group.
- To create or modify reports, the user must belong to the BI_AUTHOR group.
- To manage folder and file permissions, the user must belong to the BI_DATA_MANAGER group.
For more information, see Cognos user groups and permissions.
Datastore connection for Sterling Order Management System
Cognos on Cloud is connected to the Sterling Order Management System high availability disaster recovery standby database to eliminate any performance impact on the Sterling Order Management System production environment.
The operational reports are run against the production standby database.
This approach eliminates the performance impact on the Sterling Order Management System environment with the following tradeoffs:
- Columns that contain CLOB data cannot be included in a report. Attempts to query columns with CLOB data cause the query to fail.
-
If the primary database becomes unavailable to Sterling Order Management System, you cannot run the reports because the database that is used by the reports becomes live. Report is not generated to prevent the impact on performance.
Scenarios in which the primary database can become unavailable include routine database maintenance that you schedule, and failover of the primary database to the standby database.
Environments
IBM
Cognos Analytics is enabled only for QA and Production
environments on cloud. However, it is not bundled with the developer toolkit that is available by
default. The integration provides only one Cognos QA environment by default. If you have multiple QA
environments, ensure that you select an environment which most closely resembles your Production
environment. If you need additional environments, contact the Customer
Support Portal.
As part of the integration,
IBM
Cognos Analytics is enabled
only on Preproduction and Production environments on cloud.
IBM
Cognos Analytics
is not integrated with the QA environment.
The performance of reports in the Cognos QA or Preproduction environment does not directly indicate the performance of the same report in the Cognos Production environment. The performance of reports depends on the data volumes.
Cognos on Cloud limitations
- The print option in IBM Cognos Analytics is for a local network printer. Since the server is on cloud, the print feature is unavailable. However, you can save the scheduled report as a PDF document or as a spreadsheet that can be easily printed.
- Cognos on Cloud does not provide an option to manage images on the server. However, you can add the images to reports as an HTML object.
- You cannot save the report output to a local or a shared folder in a file server.
Reports for large data volume
If you need to generate reports with large data volume for analytical purposes such as financial or predictions, which generally ranges from multiple weeks to months, you can use the data extract service to periodically send data in to your ETL or business intelligence systems. To export bulk data, you must integrate Sterling Order Management System with your ETL or Business Intelligence systems. You can then query the data that you need from that system.
You can also leverage API events such as OnSuccess
events on the
createOrderOnSuccess
transactions and use JMS to send data to your ETL or business
intelligence system for querying the data that you need from that system.
You can also use the dashboards in Order Hub to view the order data on the Sterling Order Management System next-generation platform if you use IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility for managing your inventory.