differences between "Cognos TM1 and "Cognos 10 BI

Question

What the differences between "Cognos TM1" and "Cognos 10 BI"? Which one is consider as BI Tools by IBM?

Answer 1

There are huge differences between "Cognos TM1" & "Cognos 10 BI"!

Cognos TM1 is a (OLAP) multidimensional database which can be queried from Excel and the Web through "TM1 Web", "TM1 Executive Viewer" and "Cognos 10 BI". Within this database, you'll be able to create almost anykind of OLAP / Decisional application.

Cognos 10 BI is a web based reporting application. Users, depending on their rights (licence) will be able to run reports, schedule reports and/or create ad hoc analysis against relational and/or multidimensional databases. In order to do so, a logical layer has to be built using "Framework Manager". This logical layer is used to hide database complexity and to provide to the end users relevant information.

Answer 2

In simplest terms:

• TM1 is a database engine and a collection of applications for accessing and managing its databases.
• Cognos BI is a collection of web applications that provide pretty interfaces for viewing and doing stuff with data.

More often than not, Cognos BI uses TM1 databases as its data source, but it does not have to. If Cognos BI is using TM1, most of the same user functions that are possible in TM1 applications are also available through Cognos BI, except they are available in a more user-friendly manner. Cognos BI also adds functionality not in TM1 applications to allow additional data management. IBM's marketing is confusing, but generally Cognos BI and Cognos TM1 collectively are considered to be the BI Tools package that they offer.

Now to be a little more technical about TM1, it is not just a plain old database. As others here have mentioned, it is a multidimensional OLAP database. It is able to handle numeric and string data, but it does not have a concept of NULL values. Numeric data can be summarized using consolidated elements. It has attributes to store metadata in. It has a built-in rules engine to handle business logic and custom calculations. It has processes for ETL and database maintenance tasks. It has chores for scheduling processes at various intervals. It links to Excel workbooks. Lastly, in addition to these features and more that are provided out of the box, TM1 exposes an API for programming against using 3GLs such as C++, C#, Java, and even VBA.