IBM Cognos Interview Questions And Answers

IBM Cognos Interview Questions And Answers prepared from Codingcompiler experts. These IBM Cognos Interview Questions were asked in various interviews conducted by top multinational companies across the globe. We hope that these interview questions on IBM Cognos will help you in cracking your next job interview. All the best and happy learning.

In this article, you’ll learn

IBM Cognos Interview Questions
IBM Cognos Interview Questions And Answers
Advanced IBM Cognos interview Questions And Answers
The Best IBM Cognos  Interview Questions And Answers

IBM Cognos Interview Questions

  1. Define Report item?
  2. Define query items?
  3. Give the advantages of Cognos?
  4. Define Cognos Reporting tool?
  5. Name the types of gateway?
  6. Define dimensions?
  7. Name the types of hierarchies?
  8. Define framework manager?
  9. What is Dynamic Cube?
  10. Cognos Dynamic Cube solution consists of what elements?
  11. When to use Cognos Dynamic Cubes?
  12. Cognos Dynamic Cubes support which databases?
  13. Where Dynamic Cube resides in Cognos BI Environment?
  14. Can you explain Dynamic Cube Lifecycle in Cognos?
  15. How do you administrate Dynamic Cube?
  16. What Are Products Of Cognos?

IBM Cognos Interview Questions And Answers

Q. Define Report item?

Answer: It’s nothing but a query item when it is drag and drop into the work area.


Q. Define query items?

Answer: It’s mainly used in Reporting and for BI Authors it is the most essential object from the framework manager. These have lot of properties associated with them and are present in query subjects. They are similar to subsets of query subjects.


Q. Give the advantages of Cognos?

Answer: The advantages of Cognos are:

A) Planning

B) Analysis

C) Forecasting

D) Score carding

Q. Define Cognos Reporting tool?

Answer: It’s a reporting tool of IBM which help us in reporting and analysis of different data from a data warehouse.Read this blog to find out why Business Intelligence tools are critical to today’s enterprises.


Q. Name the types of gateway?

Answer:

There are three types of gateway:

A) CGI (Common Gateway Interface)

B) ISAPI (Internet Service Application Interface)

C) Tomcat

Q. Define dimensions?

Answer: It defines the structure of a cube. Any dimension must have at least one key attribute and other attributes so that it may define hierarchies.


Q. Name the types of hierarchies?

Answer: 

There are two types of hierarchies in Analysis Services:

A) One is Attribute hierarchies

B) Second is User defined hierarchies.


Q. Define framework manager?

Answer: It’s a development tool which is used to create the end-user layer used by authors to build their BI objects.

Q. What is Dynamic Cube?

Ans: Dynamic Cubes are in-memory OLAP cubes that load data directly from relational data sources that are structured in a star or snowflake schema

  • Introduced as a new feature from IBM Cognos BI 10.2
  • The Cognos Dynamic Cubes technology is part of the IBM Cognos BI query stack
  • The goal of IBM Cognos Dynamic Cubes is to provide quick response to reports and analyses on large volumes of data.
  • Enabling high-performance interactive analysis over terabytes of data


Q. Cognos Dynamic Cube solution consists of what elements?

Ans: IBM Cognos Dynamic Cube consists of the following elements, they are:

  • IBM Cognos Cube Designer
  • IBM Cognos Dynamic Cubes Server
  • Aggregate Advisor (part of IBM Cognos Dynamic Query Analyzer)


Q. When to use Cognos Dynamic Cubes?

Ans: Data warehouse with star or snowflake schema

  •    A server with adequate memory
  •    A database with approximately 25 million or more fact table rows


Q. Cognos Dynamic Cubes support which databases?

Ans: Cognos Dynamic Cubes support various databases.

Supported Databases (in the current 10.2 release) include IBM DB2, IBM Netezza, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata.

Q. Where Dynamic Cube resides in Cognos BI Environment?

Ans: Dynamic cube are in-memory OLAP containers that reside within the DQM server

Q. Can you explain Dynamic Cube Lifecycle in Cognos?

Ans:

  • Model and Publish (Warehouse and CM)
  • Deploy and Manage (Dynamic Cube Server, CM)
  • Reporting and Analytics (Dynamic cube, Logs)
  • Optimize (Warehouse, CM, Logs)

Q. How do you administrate Dynamic Cube?

Ans: Administration tasks include assigning the cube to the QueryService instance, starting it, monitoring its health, and refreshing its contents.

  • Start/Stop the Cube
  • Monitoring Cube
  • Managing the cache
  • Scheduling a refresh of the cache

Advanced IBM Cognos interview Questions And Answers

Q. What Are Products Of Cognos?

Answer :

Cognos 6.6 7.0,7.3(PowerPlay, Impromptu)–ReportNet1.0,1.1mr1, 1.1mr22—ReportNet 8.0(latest)IWR is use by Impromptu to publish reports, PPES is used by PP, Cognos Connection is used by report. there are many other tools but these are the main.

Q. List the types of hierarchies.


Ans. There are two types of hierarchies in Analysis Services:

One is Attribute hierarchies.
Second is User-defined hierarchies.

Q. What are all the components of Report Studio? 


Ans. Following are the components of Report Studio:

  • Objects panel
  • Properties panel
  • Explorer bar
  • Report Viewer

Q. How Framework Manager Uses Cardinality

Ans: Cardinality is used by the query engine to:

  • Identify query subjects that behave as facts and dimensions.
  • 1..n cardinality implies fact data on the n side and dimension data on the 1 side.
  • Avoid double counting fact data.
  • Support loop joins in star schema models.
  • Cardinality is applied in the context of a query.
  • Query subjects may be facts or dimensions depending on the other query subjects included in the query.

Q. What are Determinants?

Ans: Determinants Feature first introduced in Cognos 8 used to provide control over granularity when aggregating

Reflects granularity by identifying groups or subsets of data in a query subject

Used to ensure that repeating data is aggregated correctly

Are set during import based on unique key and index information in a database

Used by Framework Manager to determine levels in default hierarchy when auto-generating regular dimensions from query subjects


Q. When and how should you use Determinants?

Ans: When do I need to use determinants:

When dimensions connect to fact tables at levels of granularity that have repeating keys

When there is a need to count or perform aggregate functions on a key or attribute that is repeated

To avoid generating a ‘distinct’ clause on distinct keys

Q. What is Modle Advisor?

Ans: Use Model Advisor – Check early and often

Model Advisor is a useful tool for detecting common modelling issues, Cardinality issues, Potential join path conflicts, Incorrect determinants. Easy to configure to check as for as much or as little as desired, Run after import to check for areas that need further investigation, Run again periodically to identify potential issues as you work, Direct links to the problem area and Help.


Q. What is Dimensional Modeling for Report and Analysis?

Ans: Dimensionally modelled relational (DMR) constructs in Classic Query Mode

  • Logical dimensional layer over top of a relational model
  • Single measure dimension and one or multiple regular dimensions
  • Enables drill-up/drill-down analysis in the studios
  • Dimensional layer can be applied over any star schema model
  • Not a requirement that the underlying data source be a star schema design
  • Dimensions and measure dimensions are constructed from model query subjects or database query subjects
  • At runtime, queries are run to spin a virtual cube on disk to simulate the OLAP style analysis capabilities

Q. Explain How To Create Powerplay Reports?

Answer :

To create a powerplay report

  • You have to create a IQD file from impromptu by saving IMR report as IQD.
  • Use Frame Work manager model and externalise the query subject you want to use inpowerplay transformer and powerplay.
  • When you have the IQD file published to a location such as UNC.
  • Go to powerplay transformer model and select new.

Q. How Can I Schedule Reports In Cognos?

Answer :

  • By using Cognos Schedular, one can schedule the running reports in Impromptu to execute and save it in desired format.
  • By using Cognos MACRO script language the reports can be executed and distributed to recipients by using mail applications.
  • Compiled Cognos MACROs can be scheduled using Cognos Schedular.

Q. What Is Meant By Alternate Drill Down With Ex?

Answer :

Alternate drill down path means there will be two path to opt. For example- We will have time dimension now the client requirement is they want two type of year -one is calender year(Jan-Dec) and another is fiscal year(Apr-Mar).

The Best IBM Cognos  Interview Questions And Answers

Q. What Is The Difference Between A Cascading Report And Drillthru Report?why Do We Go For Drill Thru Report?

Answer :

Cascading report works based on the condition but drill thru work based on the data item what we select as a drill thru options.

Q. What Junk Dimension Contains?

Answer :

it contains the miscellaneous attributes such as flags , which does belong to the main dimension table.

for eg; In a sales order fact table ,some informations like, web-order , whether this is a online order or not new_cust-Is this person a new customer , verification- whether the order has been verified.

Q. What Is The Difference Between Filter And Condition?

Answer :

A Filter is a restriction that reduces the amount of data displayed in the report.

The report filters are non-reusable and specific to the report.

Filters are

before aggregation: non-aggregated records are filtered(details record)

after aggregation: summary records are filtered.


Q. What Is The Security Module Used In Cognos?

Answer :

The security module used in cognos is cognos access manager.


Q. What Is Report Burn And Where It Occurs?

Answer :

Report can be divided into different parts and sending these different parts of report to different users. It occurs in cognos connection.

Q. What Is Difference Between Drill Through And Drill Down?

Answer :

drill through allows you to navigate from summary to detailed information.

drill down also similar kind of thing,for example will do drill down on year if we drill down on this the next level will come means year contains quaters, it contains

  • months,
  • months contains weeks,
  • week contains days.

Q. How Can I Change Reports To Another Package?

Answer :

Open that report and save as that reportSelect public folder and then select package in which package you want to save then save it.

Q. Mention the difference between ‘macros’ and ‘prompt’?

Ans: Macro is used to run set of instructions to execute the report but prompt provide a way to change the report dynamically.

Q. What is a Cube?

Ans: Cube is set to be multi-dimensional view of dimension and measures and it is used to analyze the data in various forms like Slicing and Dicing.


Q. What is the size of the cube?

Ans: Size of the cube is 2.0GB and size varies depends on the project.

Q. What is a Snapshot?

Ans: A snapshot is created to copy the exact data that is related to current report and compare with another report.

Example: Data of this week compared with previous week.


Q. Is it possible to join multiple Databases in a Catalog?

Ans: No, it is not possible to join multiple databases in a catalog and it can be achieved by Hotfile.

Q. What is defined as Cognos Impromptu?

Ans: A Cognos Impromptu is set to be a tool which is used for the generation of business intelligence reports.

Q. What are query items?

Ans: Query items are the most important object in framework manager and it has a lot of properties associated with it. This is mainly used for reporting and business intelligence.

Q18. What are all the advantages of Cognos?

Ans: Following are the advantages of Cognos:

  • Planning
  • Analysis
  • Forecasting
  • Scorecard

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