Need Cognos help! I'm confused!

[cognosnewbie]

Pardon the intrusion.

I'm a web developer (.net, cold fusion, SQL, ORACLE) and I've used Cognos before for a project way back in 2002.  I think we used Impromptu to create and display reports (in pdf)  within our web application.

Now, I am involved in a new project and its time to choose a reporting solution again.  The reports are mainly list type reports (Contact list etc) that will run off the web application (jsp) against an Oracle 10g database and displayed as a PDF thru a browser or viewer.

Which Cognos solution should I be looking at?  I know Cognos is big on powerplay and cubes and portals and other great presentations.  However, all we need is something that I know we can do in Crystal rather easily but since we are directed to use Cognos, we have to comply.  The Cognos site is really unhelpful as they keep talking about Business Intelligence and all we really need is the ability to integrate the Cognos solution within our web application as seamless as possible.

Thanks!
Newbie.

[Venu_Gollapudi]

Hey Guys, I only did it by using the funtions 'Position','Char_Lenght','Substring'

[goose]

You have two main options for integration: cognos sdk or the soap api. I would personally not choose cognos as its a serious overkill for basic list type reports and also has to run as it's own instance. If you want a decent free embedable reporting library check our jasperreports and ask your boss/sponsor for a valid reason why you must use cognos.

[rockytopmark]

Cognos 8.3, Report Studio. 

This is a web based report development appication that is the next generation (since CRN days... 2003) to your old pal Impromptu, and can do list reports as you can do in Crystal.  Output formats include PDF, many versions of Excel, XML and CSV, along with the standard interactive HTML.

Reports can be called using a parameterized URL, imbedded in an IFRAME, and I am sure a lot of other ways... that don't require any special programming that a web developer like yourself couldn't handle.