Here are some ideas for maximizing developer productivity with IBM Cognos. Most of these ideas will also reduce the long term support costs of the implementation.
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- Stick to using the out of the box functionality. It is always tempting to add some clever Javascript code to customize the UI, but it is time consuming to troubleshoot and expensive to support.
- Development servers should be sized adequately. All those extra seconds developers spend waiting for reports to run add up quickly. What is more expensive, boosting the server hardware or paying for extra development time?
- Get the data as clean and as stable as possible before starting development.
- Invest the time necessary to get the Framework Manager (metadata) model right. Do not develop things in the reports that can be part of the model.
- Use templates to enforce a standard layout. Structure the reports consistently.
- Use naming conventions for everything: report names, queries, prompts, anything that a developer touches.
- Make any development work reusable. Some good ideas for that here.
- Use source code control. An integrated system like MotioCI or BSP is nice, but SVN and Git are free and can handle the reports as exported xml files.
- Budget some project time for developer documentation: written by developers for developers. Use screen captures and video screencasts liberally.
- Automate the deployment process, from the DEV server to QA and then to production. It should be as simple as sending an email and running a script. This is one approach to automated deployment and there are tools that do this as well.
- Keep the DEV and QA servers and databases in sync. Having developers troubleshoot differences between environments is inefficient.
- Have the developers meet with end users, at least once.
Hey David,
I am really taking a liking to your blog. Regarding source control and Cognos, do you have any feedback on how you might integrate say SVN or Git with framework manager / transformer models?
Curious to know your thoughts on this.
Best,
CJ
Hi CJ, thanks for reading. I have a pdf from a couple years ago put out by an IBM Cognos partner on using TortoiseSVN with Framework Manager and Transformer models. I will send it to you by email.