Integrating Cognos 8 with ASP.Net

Cognos 8 - Still Ahead of Microsoft

Cognos 8 is a great all-in-one BI portal. Unfortunately, as much as I love SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and the companion products Microsoft is looking to package with it like Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services (MOSS), it's still playing catch-up to products like Business Objects, Cognos and Microstrategy.

Where's my Support Community?

As an ASP.Net developer who has worked with SSRS for years, I found the development community a terrific source of support when trying to extend the product for things like forms authentication and embedding reports in a ReportViewer control.

In contrast to the support I found for SSRS as a .Net developer, the support community for Cognos is a mashup of spotty private resources, a difficult-to-navigate support forum at the IBM site and a plethora of consultants willing to do and promise anything...for a fee! This is one area where Microsoft definitely has everyone else beat.

The Cognos SDK

The Cognos SDK documentation can be vague and the code samples are soulfully devoid of code comments. I don't know about you, but I'm the kind of guy who needs a clear "here's how you do it" code sample. No fluff. You need to do this? Here's how to do it and here's a clear code snippet showing it in action. On MSDN, this is that bottom 5% of every help file that you immediately skip down to. :)

Getting Started with Cognos

If you're like me, your first Cognos task might be to produce a seamless sign on (SSO) from an existing web site using forms authentication. I found that task frustratingly difficult, albeit doable once I cracked the Cognos black box! This seemingly ubiquitous chore is something IBM has not packaged up as a 'here you go' example. When I asked them about that, like wolves happening upon a one-legged rabit, they suggested I hire a $1250/hr consultant! Okay, it wasn't really that much...give me some slack, it's called poetic license! ;)

As a C# developer, I was also surprised to learn that my forms authentication SSO scenario required, in addition to other bits, the creation of a custom Java authentication provider that you compile down to a jar and stick on the Cognos server. Not fun for a button-up Microsoft developer who doesn't know a lick of Java! ;) But to be fair, it wasn't that hard, and I'll walk the Java-challenged .Net developers like me through the process in future posts.

This Blog

My goal for this blog will be to translate the Cognos SDK into something ordinary people can understand and describe solutions for fairly typical .Net integration scenarios. Looking forward to penning future posts and hearing your feedback!