DSXchange

Hi
Can someone explain the way the Business Glossary interfaces with Cognos and Datastage. Is it via the Infoserver Metadata layer, what is the mechanism used.

Also has anybody used it in a business environment, and what was the feedback

Thanks

Tim

In Cognos 8.4 there are two new menu options - one for metadata data lineage and one for business glossary. The data lineage option takes the current report and does a search for that report in the Metadata Workbench tool to show a lineage report. The Business Glossary option does a search for a highlighted column or field on the report in the Business Glossary tool.

You can get the same functionality if you use the Business Glossary Anywhere tool - you just highlight a text string in a Cognos browser, Excel or PDF report and do a Glossary search for it via a hotkey. The 8.4 menu option might be more accurate at finding the definition than the Anywhere search but I haven't tested this.

With DataStage there is not a lot of interaction with Business Glossary unless you are using the FastTrack mapping tool. In FastTrack the Glossary helps you map columns by showing the physical and glossary names and this generates a DataStage job. Without FastTrack an ETL developer would search for fields or terms in Glossary to find out what they mean just like any other user.

I haven't used Glossary from Cognos it but I have seen a demo and it looks quite straight forward.

As Vincent notes, Cognos has a feature that is built-in for querying the Glossary and also performing Lineage. In the BG case, Cognos is using some of the Business Glossary Anywhere api that is back at the central WAS Server....it is the same, except that for the Cognos scenario, nothing has to be installed at the workstation. You would still want BGA if you need to do the searching from other Windows based tools. Still, the Cognos scenario is a perfect "thin client" model. As far as I know, a license for BGA is still required in order to use the Cognos feature.

Ernie

PS.... I have it working on my mahcine. It works very well, is really easy to configure, and is well documented. It can be done against just about any column in the Report and Query Viewer, and is also very useful while in the various design studios.

Ernie

Thanks for the background we are going to do an evaluation of the whole product line and the various interactions