Understand How Cognos 8 is Different From Cognos Series 7
We recommend that you become familiar with Cognos 8 before you develop a migration plan.
Cognos 8 is different from Cognos Series 7. You should not use migration as a tool to educate you
on Cognos 8. If you do, your migration may simply re-create the same application in Cognos 8,
without taking advantage of new features and functionality.
Cognos 8 is built on the proven and scalable Web services architecture introduced with Cognos
ReportNet. This architecture supports a truly unified product suite, and it is the basis for future
development efforts at Cognos. Compared with Cognos Series 7, business users work differently
with Cognos 8:
• A single product provides all business intelligence capabilities: reporting, analysis, scorecards,
dashboards, business event management, and data integration. Users chose the capabilities
they need.
• Because metadata is defined once, users have a complete and consistent view of corporate
data. Users do not have to go to different products or locations to see different data.
• Individual users can choose the tools and information they need. They do not have to learn
generic tools designed for highly technical users. This flexible business intelligence meets the
needs of a greater variety of roles in the organization.
In addition to understanding the high-level concepts and benefits of Cognos 8, you should
understand the differences in features between Cognos Series 7 and Cognos 8. A direct mapping
for some features does not exist between Cognos Series 7 and Cognos 8. For example, in
PowerPlay, you can apply 80/20 suppression to data. Analysis Studio does not include this option.
However, the top and bottom filtering options in Analysis Studio provide greater control for
suppressing data and allow you to achieve similar results to 80/20 suppression in PowerPlay.
Assess the Size and Complexity of Your Cognos Series 7 Application
We recommend that you complete a detailed assessment of your Cognos Series 7 applications
before migration. The size and complexity of your Cognos Series 7 applications are important
factors to consider when planning the migration. The total size of the applications has a
significant impact on the time required to complete the migration. You must understand the
complexity of your applications to set appropriate and accurate expectations for the migration. A
detailed assessment can take several weeks to complete for large applications.
You likely will not want to migrate Cognos Series 7 content that is rarely or never used. You can
use the auditing tools included with Cognos Series 7 to identify how often content is used. The
audits provide an objective view of the applications. Assessing and reducing the size of the
applications is a useful exercise even if you decide to not migrate. Do not rely only on user
feedback to determine which content is used.
The complexity of your applications determines how much work is required to refine the content
in Cognos 8. What proportion of the reports are basic list or crosstab reports? What proportion of
the reports use advanced features, such as drill-through to other applications, or complex
formatting? For some types of reports, a relatively minor amount of work is required to refine the
reports after migration. For more complex reports, you may want to recreate the content from
scratch, or make significant changes to migrated content, to take advantage of new features and
functionality in Cognos 8. Your experience with Cognos 8 will help you to understand
functionality mapping between Cognos Series 7 and Cognos 8 and to decide if Cognos 8 offers a
better alternative for achieving the same results.
Identify How Cognos 8 Adds Value to Your Cognos Series 7 Application
We recommend that you work with your users to identify essential Cognos 8 functionality that
was not available in Cognos Series 7.
After you learn about Cognos 8 and assess your Cognos Series 7 applications, you will realize that
you do not want to use migration to simply replicate your Cognos Series 7 applications in Cognos
8. You want to take advantage of the benefits of Cognos 8 while leveraging the investment you
have in Cognos Series 7 applications.
• List the critical features in Cognos Series 7 applications. Are these features available in
Cognos 8? Do the migration tools map the feature to Cognos 8, or do you have to re-create
the feature after migration? If direct mapping in Cognos 8 does not exist, can you achieve
similar results in a different way in Cognos 8?
• List the essential Cognos 8 features that were unavailable in Cognos Series 7. Can you add
these features as enhancements to a migrated report? Should you create new reports that use
the features?
By comparing and listing important features with your users, you can start to identify which
Cognos Series 7 content is a good candidate for migration. You should migrate content if most
features map from Cognos Series 7 to Cognos 8, if the migration tools preserve all or most of the
feature, and if you find it easier to enhance the migrated report with Cognos 8 features than to
re-create the report.
