Cognos Implementation for a Publishing company
Executive Summary:The Publishing Company has had a single overriding strategy: to acquire and launch publications that address clearly identified vertical niches and to create powerful niche brands that lead their respective markets. Repeated execution of this strategy has brought their investors an average internal rate of return (IRR) well in excess of two hundred percent. With offices in Malibu, New York City and Boston, the company is parent to a family of publications that are targeted to the world's most affluent readers.
Why Aviana and CognosAviana has been implementing enterprise-wide BI solutions for Fortune 100 Clients for over a decade. Aviana has vast experience in the development of Data Warehouse and Data Marts, with a strong understanding of Data Architecture and Data Modeling along with the experience of using ETL tools such as Informatica®, Ascential® (Prism), ETI®, Decision Stream® (Cognos), and Acta® (now part of Business Objects). Other reasons for choosing Aviana were:
Challenges Faced
Some of the other disadvantages of the existing reporting system, which was developed in Microsoft Excel®, were:
Unique Challenges
One of the most important dimensions (Salespersons) was stored in an array in the database column and so was the percentage commission. These needed to be separated out into distinct rows to get meaningful results and the desired reports. A database 'view' had to be created to handle non-standard features such as array-encoded table columns (e.g., Sales Representative ID and Sales Commission Percentage). The view was created under a different owner name, so it didn’t appear in the Pub database schema, and therefore the information for reporting came from two different schemas -- which again resulted in performance issues.
Aviana's Success Strategy
A modified copy of the Progress database was created on MS SQL Server and used for reporting purposes. This approach used some basic data transformations during the Extract Transform and Load (ETL) processing to make the SQL database conform to conventional database norms. The approach resulted in a scenario which had:
The diagram below depicts the design using DTS with MS SQL Server 2000. Proposed Data Transformation from Current System (NOW)
If the current Application database changes in future, such as from Progress to MS SQL Server 2000, only the data transformation process will need to change, as illustrated in the diagram below. The diagram below depicts the design using DTS with MS SQL Server 2000:
Proposed Data Transformation from Current System (NOW)
Potential Data Transformation Route (FUTURE)
 Benefits to the Customer
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