IBM Cognos Express 10.2.1 is out. Here is a list of what is new:
1. The first notable change is that Cognos Express is on the same version with Cognos Enterprise. This means that integrated under the hood you will find:
- Cognos BI version 10.2.1.1,
- TM1 version 10.2 and
- Cognos insight 10.2.1.
This also means all the bug fixes and improvements and new features introduced in the enterprise platforms are present here.
New features like:
- Cognos TM1 Scorecarding,
- RAVE charting engine
- Cognos TM1 mobile contributor app for the Apple iPad
- TM1RunTI, a command line tool that can run TM1 TI processes
- New TM1 Web
- New Performance Modeler
- … and more!
2. IBM Cognos mobile is fully supported.
Users can interact with Cognos Express via their mobile devices, smartphones or tablets. They can view reports, dashboards and active reports from everywhere.
3. Cognos Express now supports Microsoft Analysis Services (MSAS) data sources. More specifically it supports MSAS 2008 and MSAS 2012.
4. New installation wizard consistent with the other versions of Cognos.
5. IBM Cognos Dynamic Query Analyzer (DQA) is now available for Cognos Express.
6. IBM Cognos Analytic Server (ICAS) Operations Console. Or else TM1 Top Utility on steroids. The ICAS Operations Console is installed as part of the standard installation and is run from a web browser.
7. Cognos for MS Office add-in capable of retrieving content from Cognos reports, is now available
8. Support of new operating systems, Windows 8 32 and 64 bit and Windows 2012.
9. In Cognos Express 10.2.1 Advisor and Data Advisor are deprecated. This means that they are available in the current release, but will not be available in future releases.
Below is table that sheds some light on the three different versions of IBM Cognos.
| Table 1. Comparison of the key capabilities of Cognos Insight, Cognos Express, and Cognos Enterprise | |||
| Key capabilities | Cognos Insight | Cognos Express | Cognos Enterprise |
| Dashboards | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Analysis | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| What-if scenario modeling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Planning and budgeting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Production reports | Yes | Yes | |
| Microsoft Office integration | Yes | Yes | |
| Support for Apple iPad | Yes | Yes | |
| Support for other mobile devices | Yes | Yes | |
| Enterprise-wide collaboration | 100 User Limit | Yes | |
| Scorecarding | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Software Development Kit | Yes | Yes | |
