Cognos Analytics

OLAP cubes are very popular data sources to IBM Cognos Analytics, so I’m proud to announce as of version 11.2.0 they are supported for Time-Series Forecasting and the AI Assistant (natural language questions).

Whether they be Planning Analytics TM1 cubes, PowerPlay cubes, Dynamic Cubes, Microsoft Analysis Services (MSAS / SSAS) cubes, Oracle Essbase cubes, or even DMR (dimensionally modeled relational) packages -  Forecasting and the Assistant are now fair game.

 


Data modules containing cubes directly (not through packages) that were created in version 11.1.x may need to be recreated in 11.2.x for these AI features to work.
If your cubes are in packages, an Enrich package action must be taken prior to using Forecasting or the Assistant since the system's AI uses data characteristics (metadata) it captures from the cubes during package enrichment to operate these features accurately.

With an enriched package containing OLAP cubes and/or tabular data, automated forecasting can be projected onto any line, bar, and column visualizations with statistically sufficient data.

All the skills of the Cognos Analytics AI Assistant are now fully functional with your OLAP cube data. While having a natural language conversation with the Assistant about your cube, you can ask it to suggest questions, or to generate visualizations or even entire dashboards.  You can direct it to apply a filter on  particular member or aggregate the data a certain way.