Difference between deployment and package promotion

[vgandhi]

Hi ,

Very recently I did cognos installation on my local machine.  While doing install for sample data, tutorial mentioned that first I should copy sample data to deployment folder and then do the import.
Then it was suggested that package should be published.  I am little confused here. 

1 ) Why there is need to publish package if I am importing it using admin console ?

2)  How actual deployment work in production ?  Looking at the few videos on internet I understand that first there is need to export the package or folder from source environment and import the same into destination environment. 
After import is there need to publish package ?  If yes, how can you do that when you have two environment.  Are Admin console for each environment are different  ( distinct) from one another ?
Kindly advise.  Thank you in advance.

[blom0344]

If you import a package there is no need to publish it to that environment. A typical setup is to develop models , publish them to a development environment and export developed content to test/production environments.

As each framework manager deployment is configured for a certain Cognos environment it is rational to only publish to development and use export/import procedures to 'feed' other environments.