Wednesday, September 21, 2005

ITtoolbox Cognos Blog

I came across a Cognos blog at ITtoolbox the other day which I though I would give a mention. Cognos has been around for as long as I’ve been implementing enterprise systems. In my former days as a BaaN consultant we used to use it and even with Oracle it’s a viable option when it comes to reporting.

According to the Cognos site:

Cognos is the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and performance planning software for the enterprise. Our solutions let companies improve and direct corporate performance by enabling all of the key steps in the management cycle—from planning and budgeting, to measuring and monitoring performance, to reporting and analysis. Cognos is the only company to support all of these key management activities with a complete solution that spans all of the essential components of CPM—enterprise planning, scorecarding, and business intelligence.

The About section of the Cognos Blog states the following:

I’ve been developing financial, accounting, and production reports for the last 20 years. Follow along as I share practical experiences in making Cognos Impromptu and Powerplay have a major impact on how organizations do business. I’ll also talk real life systems development, work philosophy, and more about the kind of people I’ve met along the way.

The Author is none other than Atlanta Dan and his bio reads as follows:

I have been developing financial, accounting, and production reports for the last 20 years. I started as a CPA who fell in love with the Apple and Supercalc. Over the years I have had to master Dbase II, Lotus, MS Office (Excel and Access), SQL, and dozens of other languages to make all kinds of reports work. Powerplay and Impromptu captured me 14 years ago and I have yet to find better reporting tools. I started developing for IWR and PPES 5 years ago. Hand-in-hand with these tools I have been developing the related SQL server queries and objects, including developing and implementing data warehouses, marts, and other data staging techniques to provide the data in the format needed by Cognos Powerplay and Impromptu.

Some interesting articles have been posted to date. Enjoy reading!