From professional report authors responsible for designing one-to-many reports for the enterprise, to business users who need the ability to create their own ad-hoc queries or customize existing reports, Cognos® Business Intelligence query and reporting capabilities fit the needs of users across the organisation.

IBM Cognos 10 Business Intelligence query and reporting capabilities include professional report authoring capabilities that are easy to use and minimize the effort for report authors.

• Design and build – Create report templates to include standard report objects, queries, and layouts. WYSIWYG capability enables flexible and intuitive report assembly and core BI capabilities.
• Analyse and share – View, interact with and analyse the result set, and share the results to follow a train of thought and generate a unique perspective around information.
• Assemble and format – Drag-and-drop trusted content (BI, TM1, Real-Time Monitoring, Metric Studio, and PowerPlay), filters and other content (RSS, HTML, text and images).
• Modify and arrange – Add colors and text, add comments and personalize widgets.
• Interact and analyse – Change display, add calculations, filter prompt, drill up/down, sort data and seamlessly move to Business Insight Advanced for additional analysis.
• Share and collaborate – Share and distribute objects and reports to be consumed by others and collaborate through integrations with Lotus Connections.

Collaborative reporting
Cognos Business Intelligence query and reporting capabilities offer these collaborative reporting features to help business users communicate with others in order to drive decisions and gain additional insight.

• Comments and annotations – Create and save notes on reports that other users can then reference, making it much easier for users to share information and capture valuable insights.
• Dashboard activities in Lotus Connections – Facilitate discussions between users for more insightful decisions through integration between Cognos Business Insight and Lotus Connections results in an enterprise scalable collaborative BI environment.
• Enhanced event management – Assign owners and approval processes for specific actions with the BI workflow.

Author once, consume anywhere
Cognos Business Intelligence query and reporting capabilities enable users to create a single report that users can access on multiple devices, in multiple formats, and in other applications and processes.

• Import and refresh BI content in MS Office using Cognos for Microsoft Office.
• Embed BI content in third-party applications and portals using Cognos Mashup Services.
• Take reports with you on your iPhone, Blackberry and iPad with Cognos Mobile.
• Consume interactive report output offline or in a disconnected manner with Cognos Active Report.

Architecture and data sources
Designed for enterprise-level deployment, Cognos Business Intelligence offers proven scalability to hundreds of thousands of users through an N-tiered, multi-server, multithreaded architecture. This design provides full failover recovery and dynamic load balancing. Cognos Business Intelligence gives you access to a wide range of heterogeneous data sources, reducing the complexity of your reporting environment and giving you an opportunity to gain a complete and consistent view of the business.

Single metadata layer for all reporting
Regardless of the variety of reporting your organisation performs, all reporting data passes through a single metadata layer common to Cognos Business Intelligence. The metadata layer manages translation from the data you need to the information you see. With Cognos Business Intelligence you can report, analyse, scorecard and monitor your performance with a single view of all data sources.