Cognos 8 Business Intelligence and IBM WebSphere Portal

Cognos 8 Business Intelligence provides Cognos Portal Services as a set of out-of-the-box "portlets" that allow you to easily manage and display Cognos Business Intelligence and reporting solutions within the IBM WebSphere Portal.

Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP), is an emerging standard for integrating application data and user interfaces within industry-leading enterprise portals. This new standard protocol connects portlets and portals remotely across the Internet. WSRP is built on the common Web Services standards and allows portal vendors to easily embed a web service from a third-party software application into a portlet. The Cognos Portal Service portlets and server components utilize this protocol for communication and all major portal vendors including IBM with IBM WebSphere Portal are embracing WSRP.

Cognos 8 BI has been designated as “Ready for IBM WebSphere Portal,” by IBM, which is the highest level of validation for software applications built to run within the IBM WebSphere Portal environment, and has also received the “Ready for SOA” validation.

Incorporating Cognos reports, analysis, dashboards, and scorecards in IBM's Enterprise Information Portal helps drive higher returns on both BI and portal investments made by your organization. Cognos Portal Services provides out-of-the-box portlets, for Cognos 8 BI, Series 7 and ReportNet, allowing users to navigate, search, and view reports and other custom content.

Cognos’ Portlets in IBM WebSphere Portal

Cognos 8 Portlets

The following portlets are available:

• The Cognos Navigator Portlet assists users in browsing through Cognos Connection folders and content.
• The Cognos Search Portlet assists users in finding Cognos BI and report content saved in the Cognos Connection folder structure.
• The Cognos Viewer Portlet lets users view and interact with Cognos reports. This brings Cognos BI functionality directly into the Web-based portal environment without forcing users to go into different programs or applications.
• The Cognos Extensible Applications Portlet enables users to view and interact with unique Cognos applications containing their custom user content and options. These portlets are open and fully extensible and can be customized in a programmatic manner.
• The Cognos Metric Watch List Portlet provides the capability to view performance metrics created in Metric Studio

The Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) and Cognos ReportNet portlets included at no cost with the software and the Cognos Series 7 portlets included at no cost with Cognos Web Services. The portlets are available as options during the respective product installation processes.