MotioCI for IBM Cognos Analytics

Monitoring changes across your IBM Cognos Analytics ecosystem can be challenging. Catching errors early in the development cycle ensures your environment remains stable and reliable. For big organizations, it is of utmost importance.

MotioCI is a tool designed to support version control, testing and management for Cognos Analytics. It provides capabilities that help organizations streamline upgrades, manage deployments, and improve change tracking across reports and environments. With MotioCI you are fully in control of your Cognos Analytics space.

Below, we explore the benefits and key features of using MotioCI in conjunction with IBM Cognos Analytics.

Key benefits of MotioCI for IBM Cognos Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics is known for being one of the leading business intelligence and visualization tools, with pixel perfect reporting capabilities. However, maintaining a stable environment can be a difficult task. MotioCI demystifies the process and allows enterprises to optimize all steps of the analytics pipeline.

Some of the benefits are:

• Efficiency – Allows automation of routines and accelerated repairs
• Quality – Maintains quality of data in production with robust testing capabilities
• Performance – Betters the performance of the platform overall and prevents degradation
• Agility – Minimizes delivery time by eliminating manual tasks
• Control – Enables easy management and tracking of tasks and objects

MotioCI tools are distributed across four core modules: Version control, Automated testing, Upgrade testing and Inventory management. Combined, these tools allow your team to focus on more important matters – getting to know your data better and creating stories through visualizations.

Version control

Version control is a standard practice in modern software development. It enables teams to seamlessly work together on a project, while maintaining integrity of data. MotioCI brings version control to Cognos Analytics, a feature that does not exist in Cognos Analytics.

This module includes creation of releases, change tracking, and a roll back option – along with full history of every single edit made to a report. From filters to data item definitions and report properties, everything is recorded. Collaborative development is enhanced by a Check In option that ‘locks’ a report, so only one person can make and apply changes. Furthermore, MotioCI provides full metadata you can report on top of – allowing you to gain insight into self service activities.

Automated testing

Testing your environments and reports during different times in the development cycle is oftentimes complex, difficult to coordinate and time consuming. Cognos reports can contain many prompts, complicated calculations, visuals and variables that make manual testing a tedious task. MotioCI is the first tool to provide automated testing for Cognos Analytics.

This module has several different features, created for different types of testing scenarios. It includes:

• Regression testing for comparing two versions of a report
• Comparison testing between environments or databases
• Data testing checks for outer joins and processing time
• Format testing for visual changes, with an option to use an image overlay

On top of all of that, users can create and save testing scenarios for specific reports – streamlining the entire process. Reducing manual tasks and testing allows users to shift focus and energy onto development and analysis.

Upgrade testing

Upgrading a Cognos environment does not happen often – but you want to be in full control when it comes along. MotioCI’s upgrade module reduces downtime by automating testing and content validation. The biggest strength of the Upgrade module is the content analysis tool. With a click of a button, you can analyze objects for custom code, number of queries, prompts, drill throughs, variables and more. The tools contained in the Upgrade testing module take your next IBM Cognos migration from good to better. It is important to note that this module is not limited to just upgrade testing. It can also be used to ease transition from old technologies to new ones (e.g. CQM to DQM) or different data warehousing architectures. Additionally, test case scenarios can be saved and reused.

Inventory management

Over time, IBM Cognos Analytics environments often accumulate redundant assets as users create more content. This can lead to slow response times and unnecessary complexity. MotioCI addresses this challenge by providing analytics on the Cognos content store, enabling organizations to identify which assets are valuable, frequently accessed, or highly complex. This insight is particularly useful when planning major changes, such as upgrades or migrations. With MotioCI Inventory, teams can make informed decisions about which content to retain and which to retire, ensuring a streamlined and optimized environment.

MotioCI provides a complete solution for version control, testing, deployment and optimization of Cognos Analytics environments. By embedding quality into every stage of development and automating tedious processes, MotioCI allows enterprises to use resources in a more efficient manner. As an organization grows these tools can be used to create a controlled, secure and stable Cognos Analytics environment.