DSXchange

Hi ,

Framework Manager is the core part of Cognos BI suite.
It is internal tool of cognos to build Logical Metadata modelling by creating Cubes.

So we can say in a high level that Framework manageer is used to create metadata of report which contains relevent information pulled from database(s).

We refresh cube to update the report.

Best practice is to create view of tables then connect cognos to it.
Fetch the data from views and create cubes which is used feed values to the report.

Is there a question here anywhere?

I don't think it's fair to say (at least in version 8.4) that Framework Manager creates any metadata. Metadata are stored in the unified metadata repository of Information Server, which any of the Cognos tools can access via metadata delivery and analysis services.

One of the problems is that a database takes a physical column name and a comment. Cognos needs three pieces of metadata: column name, label and tool tip. If you define all three in the model you lose one of them in the database - usually the label which is the most important metadata since it is the name of the field used in reports. I found it best to export the metadata straight from the modelling tool into Cognos Framework Manager and to bypass the Information Server. Once in Cognos you need to make some model adjustment depending on how your model matches how Cognos works and you may need extra derived columns such as unique counts.

Another interesting integration is to take mature metadata from Framework Manager and put it into Business Glossary. Quite often the Framework Manager contains rich descriptions, like the tool tips that Vincent mentions, and "Model Comments", each of which can be stored in BG and then used in BG Browser searches, Business Glossary Anywhere, and in the Cognos 8.4 feature that dives directly into BG from within the Cognos Report and Query Viewers.

This can be done in several ways. One that I've found successful is to use the Model report extract feature from Framework Manager to create an xml document that can then be manipulated into csv for loading to BG.

Ernie