Cognos BI tool offers access to Lotus Notes data

Computerworld - Cognos Inc. today announced a tool designed to allow users of the Cognos 8 business intelligence (BI) suite to access information housed in IBM Lotus Notes databases and applications.
The new Cognos 8 Business Intelligence Data Modeler for IBM Lotus Domino is designed to allow users to access Lotus Notes applications traditionally isolated from BI access, according to officials at Ottawa-based Cognos. With the tool, users can select Lotus Notes data sources, tables and columns and label them with names that are meaningful to the business without making any changes to the existing Notes applications, according to Cognos. In addition, users can present and manage Cognos reports within the IBM WebSphere Portal and the IBM WorkSpace client to support collaboration and performance management projects.
The data modeler optimizes information ¿ typically from call center, sales tracking, employee travel and expense or other Notes applications ¿ for fast access and creates a metadata model for tools in Cognos 8, said Caroline Seymour, director of product marketing at Cognos. That data is then accessible to any other enterprise data source and can be joined to them without coding, she said.
"There is a lot of data that is stuck in these isolated Notes databases that has not been able to be leveraged by a BI deployment," Seymour said. "[Companies] have struggled historically to provide any type of reporting on top of this data."
The Cognos data modeler is available immediately.