The Cognos Software Development Kit, also known as SDK, is great way to provide automated or customized reports to your clients. A Cognos developer can use several programming languages to interact with the Cognos SDK. For example, you could use the Java platform or even Microsoft's C# (c-sharp). I personally belong to a Microsoft shop so most my discussions will be based around C# examples.
The Cognos SDK states that the Cognos SDK uses a: "...collection of cross-platform Web services, libraries, and programming interfaces provided with the Cognos 8 Software Development Kit (SDK). As a developer, you can use the SDK to create and modify reports and queries, schedule and deploy reports and other objects, and administer Cognos 8 servers and security. You can integrate Cognos 8 with your other applications, regardless of the operating systems, platforms, and programming languages used to create them."
Hopefully, that will give you a quick glimpse into the Cognos SDK. In later posts we will discuss simple Cognos SDK examples and then move onto real world scenarios. Stay tuned for more.