Hopefully you have heard about the massive licensing changes IBM made for Cognos BI. This includes the Cognos SDK (Software Development Kit). The changes went into effect the end of July 2014. IBM super-sized almost all IBM Cognos BI Enterprise clients. The great thing is that it’s automatic so you own new functionality today! (For more information on the new licenses check out the Decoding the IBM Cognos Licensing video on our website www.LodestarSolutions.com.)

As part of the change, the Cognos BI Analytic Admin license, formally known as the IBM Cognos BI Administrator, now includes the Software Development Kit (SDK) for Cognos. The question is now, what can this do for you?

What is the Cognos SDK (software development kit)

The SDK provides administrators a platform independent automation interface for working with BI services and components. Your developers can use the IBM Cognos software development kit (SDK) to create custom reports, manage deployments, and integrate security and portal functionality to better fit your existing software infrastructure. Developers can leverage a collection of cross-platform web services, libraries and programming interfaces. Imagine being able to automate repetitive non-UI tasks, such as scheduling large number of reports and changing permissions for many reports. You can even integrate IBM Cognos BI into other applications. Do you want to display all IBM Cognos BI users and their access to reports, assign a new owner to all reports for which the original owner was deleted, or automate the updating of reports and queries when a package is republished? The SDK is your tool! And you own it today!

INSTALLATION

It is a separate install so most of you probably don’t have it installed today, but you should be able to download and install it provided you are current on IBM Cognos support.

GETTING HELP

I have to admit that we are not the experts in Cognos software development kit (SDK). Previously, most of our clients found it was too expensive and never bought it. As you know, Lodestar has a number of amazing partners and if you are looking for help on the SDK, our Ninja partners at Motio ( www.motio.com ) can help you. Just tell them the pirates at Lodestar sent you.

SUPPORT ON THE SDK

If you already own the SDK, I am sure the next question you’re thinking about asking is, “Can I drop support of the SDK license I previously purchased?” Candidly, I am still working on that answer. If you shoot us an email at sales@lodestarsolutions.com, we will send you the answer as soon as we get it from IBM.