Customer Reviews

Cognos 8 BI for Consumers

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In all honesty, the information provided in this book is provided in more detail in the user guides delivered with the product. If you have worked at all with Cognos BI, this book probably provides nothing you don't already know. The book goes through the Cognos Connection interface which can be considered the "Home Page" for the Cognos product. It tells you how to access the various components of the Cognos product, but tells you nothing that would help you build queries and reports. It does list the various sample reports delivered with the product, but you can figure that out from the user guides.

If the the intent of the book is to tell you how to access the various components of the system it does a great job of doing that. If you are a developer interested in learning about the using the product and how to build queries, reports, etc. you are better off taking a look at the user guides delivered with the product. They are very indepth, thorough, and use the sample data delivered with the product.

This book is okay but not very helpful if you are going to be a Cognos developer.

The title of the book is a little misleading in that it describes the details of Cognos Connection and is pretty good at that. The term "BI" in the title seems to indicate that the reader may obtain more in-depth understanding of the Cognos product that is the focus on business intelligence. The focus is really on how to publish reports through the interface.

The sample Cognos project that comes with the product is used for the examples of the BI reports that can be published through Cognos Connection. Upon reviewing these reports, the reader will want to use the products that generate those reports.

Hopefully those parts of the Cognos product line will be reviewed in depth in future publications.

I found the book useful for those who are not familiar with the new Cognos interface and I recommend it.

An interesting review from an user's perspective from Amazon UK (www.amazon.co.uk):

Good value - does what the cover promises , 21 Jan 2008
By Baruch Morris "Bar The Car" (UK) - See all my reviews

I gave the book to a couple of new users and the response was amazing
I will recommend it to all users where I will implement it in the future as it gives a step by step attitude for a normal and high level user.

It has a hands ion attitude.

The only disadvantage is that you need a working Cognos environment to get the maximum out of this book, but they do mention that...
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