PL/SQL role or experience in cognos career

[vishal.973s]

Hi All,

It has been one year for me in congos reporting tool. I have learnt pretty much things in my term because of the big project we had.

Recently we got a requirement of PL/SQL developer in our project(max of 6- 8 months duration)  and I am planning to take it up as I

feel it will help in improving my sql skills which is the core of cognos(I assume) and later shifting back to cognos after 8 months

Please share your views on the importance of PL/SQL skills in cognos career. Will having experience on it adds more value to

datawarehousing career? or Should I  continue exploring other parts of the cognos tool. Which one will be better?

I can get experience on ETL tool if I wait...  pls help in taking the decision. will pl/sql adds so much to dw? It will be really great help. Thanks in advance :)

[CognosPaul]

Learning PL/SQL is never a waste of time. Oracle has one of the strongest databases in the market and many of the Cognos installations I've worked with are connected to at least one Oracle DB.

In general I find it a good idea to become familiarized with all systems connected to Cognos and BI in general. Such familiarity would allow you to easily identify where a solution should be implemented. Finding the current date in an SCD Type 2 is much easier when you add a "current y/n" flag (effectively changing it to an SCD Type 6).  It would also give you the tools to more effectively leverage Framework Manager, and to very quickly identify possible trouble spots in the model.

[vishal.973s]

Thanks Paul, yeah I am planning to take up the role as it will help in understanding the process. but I am not sure how much this pl/sql is going to add to the cognos career. WIll having this knowledge makes much difference to cognos developer as I can put same time in expertising cognos tool? thats what i am googling right now.  Anyway tnx for views they will be definitely helpful for me in taking decision :)

Waiting if any1 more can give their ideas on this..

[Lynn]

I agree with Paul. Strong SQL skills are beneficial to working effectively with Cognos as well as other roles in a data warehouse project. The PL portion refers to procedural language and has a little less to do with Cognos, strictly speaking. Still valuable skills to posses, and can come in handy for many roles related to Cognos and data warehousing.

What interests you the most is the best choice to make. If you see what types of things the PL/SQL role will require compared to more Cognos or an ETL role, which is the one you find most interesting? It doesn't sound like you have any bad choices.

[blom0344]

SQL : definitely  PL/SQL: doubtful

Most developers that I met who started out in a programming environment never seemed to grasp the set-based logic that should the fundament of BI. They also seemed to go for the RBAR  (Row-by-agonizing-row) approach that is associated with procedural languages. I have come across numerous solutions that were based on single-pass solutions build around stored procedures that worked pretty good with testsets , but were utterly useless in production.

Many challenges can be met through set-based logic if you abandon the idea of a single-pass solution. Especially with ETL it is a matter of thinking in terms of efficient sequential processes (multi-pass)

[vishal.973s]

Thanks all for their valuable suggestions :) I decided to take up the rool as it improves my skillset req. for BI,DW career. :)