What’s new in IBM Cognos BI 10.2.1?

IBM Cognos BI 10.2.1 was released on June 11, 2013.  In this release, IBM developers focused on three areas:  visualization, performance and big data.

Visualization

“A picture paints a thousand insights.”  Well-developed charts and visuals allow end users to quickly spot trends and/or issues.  IBM’s RAVE (Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine) significantly improves the consumer’s mobile and dashboard experiences with more flexible, adaptive and interactive visuals. Cognos 10.2.1 RAVE technology also enhances existing charting options and includes new and innovated charts.  Additionally, new charts are continuously being added and are available for download from AnalyticsZone.com.

Performance

Larger data sets that empower end users to query at will have their advantages, but can be a performance killer.  IBM developers recognized that performance is an important factor in end user adoption and a BI initiative’s success.  By tackling bottleneck issues in Active Reports, Bursting, and Dynamic Cubes they were able to improve performance on average by 40% over version 10.2.

  • Dynamic cube, the OLAP solution released in 10.2, is now 2 times faster.  10.2.1 brings reductions in required memory for aggregate caches and improved aggregate selection logic that chooses the aggregate with the lowest query cost.
  • Active Reports in 10.2.1 execute 5 times faster than 10.2.  This includes faster loading in browsers, mobile devices, and Cognos Connection.  Active Reports now have a smaller footprint due to better use of compression and engine optimization.  Additional authors can now have 10 times more data in Active Reports.
  • Bursted reports created in Report Studio 10.2.1 use hardware resources more efficiently by allowing distribution across all report servers and by optimizing the execution of batch reports.

Big Data

Buzz phrase of the year: “BIG DATA.”  Big data is inherently problematic from how to properly capture, organize, maintain, store, and analyze it.  Companies want the ability to look at the most complete data set possible to find correlations, spot trends, and make real time decisions.

Cognos BI 10.2.1 now has Big SQL support extended to:

  • IBM InfoSphere® BigInsights™ V2.1
  • Hive support for Apache Hive version 0.8 or version 0.9
  • SAP HANA
  • Cloudera
  • Hortonworks
  • Amazon Elastic MapReduce

In addition to visualization, performance and big data enhancements, IBM Cognos Mobile has some cool and important new features, including the ability to connect to multiple servers and use auto server configuration, the ability to zoom in on Active reports and use touch-friendly HTML5 prompts, and report fidelity for consistent viewing.

Other Cognos BI applications and administrative functions were also enhanced and, as we learn more about Cognos 10.2.1, we will surely bring them to your attention.

Leave a Comment

X
Send this to a friend