Cognos Updates Online OLAP Application

With the new drag-and-drop interface, users can grab a column and move it to a row. PowerPlay automatically pivots the presentation by swapping all columns and rows to the new layout. Such direct manipulation also can be used to nest and reorder information, according to the Burlington, Mass., company.

A new custom subset feature enables users to create lists they frequently need to model and analyze. These lists can remain unchanging - analyzing sales within the same five cities, for example - or can grow according to user-written formulas. Here, for instance, PowerPlay could retrieve a shifting subset of products whose sales have grown more than 10 percent during the quarter. PowerPlay can store all custom subsets with the users' reports, or publish those reports to a portal for wider distribution.

Another function, referred to by the unwieldy "Drill-through Targets by Dimension Level," prevents users from inadvertently choking the underlying database and infrastructure with too-fine analysis. "PowePlay knows the context of dimensions," said Mark Morton, product marketing manager. "If you're at the country level and want to see every address for every customer for every product, the query would be too big to be manageable. We've added the governing capability to not let people drill through until they get low enough in the hierarchy."

Once people do reach an appropriate dimension, however, PowerPlay enables them to drill past the summary information contained in OLAP cube through to the transactional data in the relational database. "The system can see the context of where you are, and deliver contextually appropriate information," said Morton.

Other improvements in the new version include a high-performance data cache that can contain more than 1 billion rows and 2 million categories; enhanced integration with Microsoft Office, enabling native Excel charting and formatting; and scenario-based, what-if planning and analysis.

In addition, PowerPlay now offers a centralized metadata repository it shares with other members of the Cognos Enterprise Business Intelligence Series, including ReportNet and Metrics Manager. "That means just one thing to back up for OLAP, relational and metrics information," said Morton. "You can't get that from anyone else."