Cognos To Debut Improved OLAP Software

Cognos this week will introduce PowerPlay 7.3, an enhanced version of its online anlaytical processing (OLAP) software that company officials said will allow more focused and manageable data analysis.

Cognos augmented PowerPlay 7.3's drag-and-drop capabilities, increasing the range of data manipulations that were possible in Version 7.2. The company also has eased the creation of customized data subsets, allowing users to focus analysis on those subsets instead of their full breadth of data.

Another enhancement is the introduction of more governable and efficient data drill-through. Users who create dimensional models in PowerPlay Transformer can prevent other users from drilling through at higher levels in the cube, thereby cutting the volume of information sent and creating less of a drag on the database, Cognos said. A high-performance data cache in Version 7.3 allows data cubes to hold more than a billion rows of data and 2 million categories.

Cognos' Business Intelligence Series of products, of which PowerPlay 7.3 is one component, will offer centralized metadata storage that includes a single administrative interface.

In keeping with a trend among business intelligence vendors to maximize support of Microsoft Excel, Cognos said PowerPlay 7.3 will have the ability to produce formatted Excel output. Cognos also plans to announce this week that it has received Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse certification.