Surely, readers are more concerned about the new features of the new version and their administration. By now, we have briefly covered a major portion of the administration. We will now cover few more areas that have been developed in Version 10.1 and onwards. Major topics to be covered in this chapter are:
IBM Cognos Mobile is a new feature introduced in Cognos BI Version 10.1. Cognos Mobile carries features to view reports directly on smartphones and tablets. These reports may include reports authored by Query Studio, Report Studio, or Analysis Studio. These reports can be downloaded. To make Cognos Mobile work, several components are needed on the IBM Cognos BI server, and users accessing Cognos reports on mobile device require a native client on the smartphone.
Cognos Mobile supports in displaying content-rich reports on mobile handsets. It also supports the Cognos BI prompt functionality and scheduling. In case of loss of mobile, Cognos BI Administrator now has the capability to remotely remove sensitive contents from the device. There is, however, a restriction to install the same version of Cognos both for Mobile and BI server.
Cognos Mobile setup requires an installation of the Cognos Mobile service where the application tier and gateway reside. The second component is at the client end, and it is the Cognos Mobile client. For devices such as Blackberry, Cognos Mobile also needs to communicate to the BB Enterprise Server and MDS Connection Service components. The following diagram briefly shows the components interacting in an environment:
A few responsibilities of Cognos Mobile service are as follows:
Cognos Mobile works on the phenomenon of client-server architecture. To interact with IBM Cognos BI Server via Cognos Gateway, the mobile handset must have a rich client application (in the case of Blackberry handsets) that can exchange data between the server and handset. A mobile device has a mobile rich client as well as a compact, compressed content store that also supports content encryption. This client application has all the required capabilities to interact with the BI server. In the case of other smartphones (such as iOS devices), there is a separate application.
RIM (Research In Motion) owns Blackberry smartphones. It also has Enterprise Server that supports and manages security, contents, devices, and data flows. This Enterprise Server is managed by organizations themselves, and it is internal to the organization. Cognos BI uses BlackBerry MDS Connection Service to support Cognos Mobile on Blackberry handsets.
The following screenshot shows how Cognos reports appear on a mobile device:
Let's briefly discuss the installation and configuration steps for Cognos Mobile:
./issetup
for Unix flavors and issetup.exe
for Windows)../cogconfig.sh
for Linux and navigate to Start | IBM Cognos 10 | configuration for Windows).IBM Cognos BI Version 10.2 now has a separate capability to manage the Cognos Mobile security.
The users can now be restricted to use Cognos Mobile if required. Running a report on Cognos Mobile is pretty easy, and since the user interface is very simple, users may navigate to a particular report and run it in the same fashion as it is run in the IBM Cognos Connection on a desktop.