Cognos PowerPlay 7.0
PowerPlay comes in two basic versions. PowerPlay for Windows is a client/server application, and PowerPlay Web is a zero-footprint pure HTML solution. (An additional version, PowerPlay for Excel, duplicates the functionality of the client/server PowerPlay for Windows version, but within the context of an Excel spreadsheet.) None of the versions interact directly with Analysis Services; instead, they use an intermediate driver that can retrieve data from any of several different database engines, including Analysis Services. To deploy PowerPlay Web reports, you must install PowerPlay Enterprise Server.
PowerPlay for Windows has two modes: Explorer, which limits what the user can do, and Reporter, which is more free-form. Explorer mode always displays groups of members on a single level—all the members of a level or all the children of a member—whereas Reporter mode lets you place members anywhere. Certain features—notably, conditional formatting and nested charts—are available only in the structured environment of Explorer mode.
An important advantage of PowerPlay is that it is only one piece of a much larger picture. Cognos provides a wide range of BI tools, including Impromptu, a relational reporting tool; Upfront, a Web portal and reporting manager; and Visualizer, a graphing tool. These tools share a common security model and a common configuration manager. Figure 1 shows a sample sales report and graph that PowerPlay generates.
Suitability for Specific Roles
For the power analyst, PowerPlay is good. Reporter mode provides a tremendous amount of flexibility. PowerPlay allows more sophisticated analyses than any other client tool, but it also lets users create meaningless or confusing reports. If the analyst uses PowerPlay frequently enough to be comfortable with the UI, the tool can be effective.
For the data gatherer, PowerPlay is good. With PowerPlay, the report author can freeze selected slicers, but otherwise can't significantly guide the information consumer through a report. One interesting feature is PowerPlay Web's interaction with an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, in which a link from a PDF file opens a live view of a report in PowerPlay Web.
For the report user, PowerPlay is excellent. The tool is an extremely good report generator, complete with scheduling tools. As long as you set up the reports by using a special subset command to populate the axes, reports will automatically include new members as the source data changes.
Strengths and Weaknesses
PowerPlay's greatest strengths lie in two areas: enterprise connectivity and production reporting. PowerPlay is part of a suite of products that can serve data not only from multiple OLAP servers such as Analysis Services, Hyperion Essbase, and Cognos PowerCubes, but also directly from relational sources. Although most organizations select one OLAP server technology, you might need to integrate multiple OLAP products, and almost everyone wants the ability to seamlessly integrate OLAP and relational reporting. PowerPlay is the only product we reviewed that can directly produce publication-quality reports. You can output them as HTML files or PDF files, and you can download them directly to a printer. You can even schedule production of the reports.
PowerPlay's greatest weaknesses—limited Analysis Services support and complexity—come from its strengths. Because PowerPlay can communicate equally well with several OLAP server technologies, it doesn't expose the full range of Analysis Services functionality.
PowerPlay can be challenging to set up properly, but Cognos representatives assure us that numerous users have set up PowerPlay without assistance. This problem has increased with the advent of PowerPlay 7.0 because now you can't use any form of PowerPlay—even PowerPlay for Windows on a standalone machine—without first installing a directory service to handle security. You have to use either Netscape Directory, which is included as a free supplement to PowerPlay, or Windows Active Directory (AD). In addition, before you can access any Analysis Services cube from PowerPlay, you must run the Connection Manager to create a special file (an .mdc file) that contains connection information.
In addition, PowerPlay's dual-mode interface (Explorer and Reporter) can be confusing. In general, PowerPlay's UI is more confusing than most, although the Web interface for PowerPlay 7.0 is much simpler and clearer than in previous versions. The UI for PowerPlay for Windows fixed several irritating problems from PowerPlay 6.0 but isn't significantly changed. As a final minor point, although PowerPlay allows customization, it uses the Cognos Scripting Language, which is essentially Visual Basic (VB) plus Cognos's own development environment.
If the suite of Cognos products is appealing to you or if you want extensive report management and distribution flexibility, PowerPlay is a great tool. If you're looking primarily for an analytical client for Analysis Services, you can probably find a better—and simpler—tool.
Prev. page
1
[2]
3
4
5
6
next page 
