Framework Package, Dynamic Cubes and Data Modules

[HighKeys]

Hello Community,

i'm new in charge for our company's Cognos Analytics Platform, we have some Modeler which building the Reports but they could also not help me out on this topic.

I'm sorry if i choose the wrong sub but i didn't find a general one.


I'm not quite sure what we should use to model our Data, in the past we used the Framework Manager to build packages, which are used as datasource in the reporting, lastly we changed to Datamodules.

I can't find a clear answer on which modeling tool is intended for which use case, it seems that they are nearly the same but also non of them seems to be getting depreciated (at least i can't find any notes)

Can someone here clarify this topic for me?

Thank you so far!

BR

[bus_pass_man]

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cognos-analytics/12.0.0?topic=dmfm-framework-manager-features-not-supported-by-data-modules

It's a tradeoff.  FM has features which data modules do not have yet.  Presumably those gaps will be addressed at some point.  Data modules are newer and are web-based. 

[cognostechie]

Data Module was introduced as an option for the non-technical users to use to get quick results without having to wait for the technical team to do the job.

Look at it this way - You are a finance controller and you have a spreadsheet which has the budget for this year. You want to make a report to compare budget to actuals to see what percentage of budget is consumed. Your BI team already published a package using Framework Manager which has sales data so you would create a Data Module, load data from your spreadsheet , join the sales data to your spreadsheet using the Year column and you are ready to make a report.

That being said, neither is Framework Manager going away nor is the Data Module going to get all the features FM has. From a technical guy's perspective, I prefer using FM as that allows to integrate data in a much better way and has lot more features like Parameter Maps, calculations, conditional joins (use one dimension/fact instead of another dynamically) etc. Moreover Data Modules don't get refreshed automatically (as far as I can remember though I haven't used Data Modules recently) whereas FM does. FM can also read data from Excel files and as long as the new Excel file is saved in the folder, FM will automatically read the new data which Data Module won't because Data Module technically reads and saves the data in the Content Manager database.

Most companies do not have good developers and that's why they never become aware of the goodies you can do with FM !! This is also one reason why Cognos is getting beaten up by Power BI !

Feel free to reach out to me using Private messaging if you hear from your developers that there is something that 'cannot be done in Cognos'

[HighKeys]

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cognos-analytics/12.0.0?topic=dmfm-framework-manager-features-not-supported-by-data-modules

It's a tradeoff.  FM has features which data modules do not have yet.  Presumably those gaps will be addressed at some point.  Data modules are newer and are web-based. 

Thanks for the Link, i read through it :)

Data Module was introduced as an option for the non-technical users to use to get quick results without having to wait for the technical team to do the job.

Look at it this way - You are a finance controller and you have a spreadsheet which has the budget for this year. You want to make a report to compare budget to actuals to see what percentage of budget is consumed. Your BI team already published a package using Framework Manager which has sales data so you would create a Data Module, load data from your spreadsheet , join the sales data to your spreadsheet using the Year column and you are ready to make a report.

That being said, neither is Framework Manager going away nor is the Data Module going to get all the features FM has. From a technical guy's perspective, I prefer using FM as that allows to integrate data in a much better way and has lot more features like Parameter Maps, calculations, conditional joins (use one dimension/fact instead of another dynamically) etc. Moreover Data Modules don't get refreshed automatically (as far as I can remember though I haven't used Data Modules recently) whereas FM does. FM can also read data from Excel files and as long as the new Excel file is saved in the folder, FM will automatically read the new data which Data Module won't because Data Module technically reads and saves the data in the Content Manager database.

Most companies do not have good developers and that's why they never become aware of the goodies you can do with FM !! This is also one reason why Cognos is getting beaten up by Power BI !

Feel free to reach out to me using Private messaging if you hear from your developers that there is something that 'cannot be done in Cognos'

Wow Thanks! So you would recommend to stay with FM and not change to Data Modules?

Sounds like a plan, our FM package is still in CQM, i tried to republish it in DQM but many reports get errors, i think that's the first thing the developers should fix :)

Thanks for your insights!

[cognostechie]

Wow Thanks! So you would recommend to stay with FM and not change to Data Modules?

Sounds like a plan, our FM package is still in CQM, i tried to republish it in DQM but many reports get errors, i think that's the first thing the developers should fix :)

Thanks for your insights!

You are welcome :) and yes, I suggest to stay with FM because Data Modules will become a maintenance nightmare after some time and have less functionalities to offer. Converting CQM to DQM is very important and DQM sure makes the reports lot faster.