Cognos extended its IBM partnership to support the DB2 Information Integrator product in the latest release of its ReportNet enterprise reporting product. The integration targets customers that want to report across a disparate set of data sources. DB2 Information Integrator is IBM’s EII offering.
EII provides consolidated real-time views of information pulled dynamically from multiple sources. The technology, referred to by some as data federation or virtual data warehousing, avoids the need to physically move data into a single location.
IBM’s software will broaden ReportNet’s reporting capabilities to include: mainframe non-DB2 data sources like VSAM and IMS and non relational sources like remote SOAP Web Services, flat files and XML; DB2 Content Manager and third-party (FileNet and Documentum) content repositories; and even enterprise application integration (EAI) message queues.
Ottawa-based Cognos was awarded premier level status at IBM’s recent PartnerWorld for Developers conference.
Additionally Cognos also says it is integrating Ascential Software’s MetaBroker software to beef-up ReportNet’s metadata access and management capabilities. MetaBroker provides a bi-directional interface between MetaStage, the meta data management component of Ascential’s Enterprise Integration Suite and ReportNet. ReporNet will now be able to access and surface this metadata in reports.
Ascential used Metabroker to forge a similar integration with IBM’s DB2 Cube Views technology this summer.
Cognos’ open data strategy aims to open up ReportNet to third-party data integration technologies. Last week Cognos signed also an exclusive OEM partnership with EII specialist Composite Software Inc. The deal embeds a fully functional version of Composite’s Information Server into ReportNet.
