Framework Manager (FM) is the engine of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence. It is one of the intermediaries between BI and your data sources. The foundation of FM is that it can help you visualize your data and prepare it for reporting. However, Framework Manager is only as good as its data source.

Top 5 things you can do to improve Framework Manager performance:

1. Indexing – creating proper indexing will help FM traverse your data source more efficiently. Although FM can use a database that is not indexed, it will impact performance as the database grows.

2. Normalization – Framework Manager can work with different data structures, but works best when the sources are normalized. Don’t worry about trying to achieve the highest form of normalization – 3rd to 4th will do the trick.

3. Star Schema – Using a star schema will ensure FM creates the most efficient database request. In the rare case, you can also use a Snowflake Schema and still achieve good results.

4. Consolidate – If you have to put together multiple tables in order derive a single value, you might consider doing such work in the database and then present the results in a table for FM. Framework Manager can join multiple tables, however, the more layers you build the longer it takes to return a value. Performance is further compounded by the amount of data that must be returned.

5. Required Elements Only – When building FM only, bring in the elements you are going to use. If you have fields in a view that are not used in the report request, FM will still build the query command with all the fields in the view.

Improving Framework Manager performance is fundamental in creating a successful Business Intelligence environment. Feel free to contact us at Lodestar Solutions for more information at Sales@LodestarSolutions.com.