Sky Methodology and Experience for Cognos Migrations
Let Sky get you on the path to Migration
Sky has spent years perfecting how to migrate your Cognos environment. There are many migration options:
- Migrate or rebuild metadata (catalogs, framework models)
- Migrate or rebuild reports
- Integrate your PowerPlay environment or rebuild
- Build new Dashboards to replace cubes and reports
- Plus many other options and choices
Sky methodology and migration solutions will help you in the following ways:
- Migrate Fast
- Migrate at a Low Cost
- Migrate with Low Risk
Sky will help you make the right choices
Introduction
Migrating between Cognos releases can be a challenge. What content should be migrated vs. re-written? What content is being used effectively? At Sky we believe we can minimize your risk of a migration. Cognos has created a migration path for customers to migrate between releases from Series 7 to either ReportNet or Cognos 8, from ReportNet to Cognos 8, and between releases of Cognos 8. At Sky, we believe that the key to a successful migration will involve an assessment of the current environment and the success of the project will require good project management skills.
Sky’s migration solution encompasses four phases:
- Discovery/Scoping
- Migration
- Testing
- Project Management
Impromptu & Impromptu Web Reports to ReportNet or Cognos 8
Sky’s methodology for migrating Series 7 Reporting content (Impromptu & Impromptu Web Reports) to either Cognos ReportNet or Cognos 8 is designed to provide a solution for customers to migrate into the new Cognos architecture. There is an opportunity to preserve the existing investment in reports designed in the Series 7 architecture while opening the door to the new technology and capabilities of the new paradigm in reporting.
Sky Migration Methodology
- Initial assessment and scoping of architecture, environment and core BI components
- Preliminary execution of the Cognos migration utility scripts to identify potential pitfalls
- Execution of custom Sky Solutions scripts (using Cognos Macro language) to evaluate complexity of source metadata and reports to be migrated. In addition of creating a detailed specification document for each object, those scripts will identify:
- Report Complexity
- Combination opportunities
- Optimization opportunities
- Enhancement opportunities
- Potential challenges
- Grouping of the reports by complexity, combination, and enhancement.
- Development of migration based on critical path
- Execution of scripts to automate enhancements (XML parsing)
- Unit Testing and User Acceptance Testing
- Documentation and Training to client’s operation team
In addition to the migration utilities provided by Cognos, Sky has developed its own supplemental migration tools that get integrated into our solution methodology.
Discovery/Scoping Assessment
In order to have a good understanding of the environment that needs to be migrated, we do a Discovery. This helps us categorize the existing reports in order to assist in making migration decisions. Some reports may not need to be migrated, some will be re-written, some can be combined, etc. The assessment will consist of a few tools developed by Sky:
- Develop a critical Path to estimate scope for Metadata & Report Migration based on report grouping such as low, medium, complex, combine, etc.
- Run Sky Report Spec Tool to create a catalog of reports by complexity, and document prompts, locations, etc.
Critical Path
Example of Critical Path for Medium Complexity Report Type that will be combined and enhanced
The “Sky Report Spec Tool” to determine the type of reports that exist. This will allow us to determine the complexity of the migration.
- Analyze Reports for complexity
- Low – Simple List
- Medium – Calculations, Charts, Conditional Formatting
- High – Hand Written SQL, Reports currently not working
Example of Report Spec Summary Page
Example of Report Spec Detail Page Summary
Example of Report Spec Detail Page Notes
Example of Report Spec Detail Page – Prompts - Review reports for possibility of merging, changes, etc.
- Which Catalog does the report connect to
- Mapping from the Catalog
- Which fields are used
- Provide Developer specs
Migration & Testing
The Discovery/Scoping Assessment helped us determine the migration path.
- Which report will be migrated
- Which reports will be combined
- Which reports will be re-wrtitten
The next step is to run the migration tools.
- Metadata (Catalogs)
- Generate the XML from catalogs & reports
- Creates FM & Deployment packages
- Run both Impromptu and CRN/C8 reports
- Compare
- Fix errors
Project Management
Project Management is a critical success factor in a migration project. Sky has developed tools specifically for the management of a migration project. This will provide the team a snapshot of the status of the project at any time.
ReportNet to Cognos 8 Migration
Migrating from ReportNet to Cognos 8 will be easier than migrating from Impromptu, but there are differences between the tools. Sky assessment methodology will assist in mitigating the risk. Our experience will assist in helping determine any of the issues in migration.
Migrating Series 7 PowerPlay into the Cognos 8 Platform
This migration can be offered across three different scenarios:
- Scenario A : PowerPlay Web Explorer to Analysis Studio : This phase is very demanding, since the functionality has changed in C8. Simple views can migrate with minimal intervention, but more complex view will have to be re-developed
- Scenario B : PowerPlay Web Explorer migrated ‘as is’ in Cognos 8 Connection portal: This phase involves publishing the PowerPlay Web explorer views in the Cognos 8 portal. This is also known as “Inter-Operability”. Once published and migrated, the users will have the choice of either opening the views in a Series 7 environment. New views created can be in the Series 7 Inter-Operability environment or in Analysis Studio.
- Scenario C : PowerPlay Reports are re-developed in Report Studio
These scenarios can co-exist with each other.