Cognos PowerHouse Web

IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web is the exciting IBM Cognos solution for deploying Web-based applications. Using IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web in conjunction with IBM Cognos PowerHouse 4GL, you can now build Web applications using the same robust, tried-and-tested, tools already used by thousands of organizations to build their core business-critical applications.

Many organizations today are considering the Web browser as the user interface of choice. They are looking to deploy their core business systems using Web technologies. This may be to reduce the internal administration overhead associated with traditional client/server computing by simply having a Web browser on the users' desktop and the applications on centralized servers. Or it may be to extend the reach of the enterprise to provide improved customer service, additional sales channels, or alternate communication channels to their customers and suppliers.

Web application development tools

There is currently an explosion of tools available for Web application development. The vast majority of these tools are only available for development on Windows, and use Windows Server as their application server. But what if you prefer to run your business-critical Web processing on platforms such as UNIX, OpenVMS or MPE/iX? And while all of these tools can access relational databases, they typically achieve this via ODBC drivers, rather than the more efficient native database APIs. Also, few can access non-relational data sources such as C-ISAM, RMS, TurboIMAGE, or KSAM other than through ODBC drivers. This forces the developer to treat these databases and file systems as though they were relational databases -- often with severe performance implications. Finally, most of these tools are based on traditional procedural programming languages such as C or BASIC. This requires the developer to code exactly how a program must handle the low level operations, rather than just specifying at a higher level what the program is to do.

IBM Cognos Web application development

The exciting news is that IBM Cognos PowerHouse 4GL is expanding its reach to the Web. Using the enhancements made to the language in version 8.4, together with a new deployment suite known as IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web, developers can create Web applications in a fraction of the time it takes with other tools.

IBM Cognos PowerHouse 4GL

Imagine being able to develop a fully functional Web program, with add, search, change and delete capabilities, using as few as four statements -- instead of hundreds of lines of C or BASIC code. That is the reality when you choose to use IBM Cognos PowerHouse 4GL to develop your Web applications.

Data-driven processing

Business applications are typically driven by the data which they manipulate. Central to IBM Cognos PowerHouse 4GL is a strong data dictionary, where you define all of the corporate data you want your applications to be able to read or write. Valuable business rules can be included, such as data validation checks and formatting, together with user help and expanded descriptions. Non-relational data, such as C-ISAM files on UNIX, RMS files on OpenVMS, TurboIMAGE datasets on MPE/iX or DISAM on Windows, can be fully described within the data dictionary. And your existing relational databases can be used by IBM Cognos PowerHouse as sub-dictionaries, so definitions don't have to be duplicated in multiple places.

Sophisticated business data processing models

The IBM Cognos PowerHouse engine contains sophisticated business data processing models. It knows about the types of processing that typical business applications need to apply to data, and about the relationships found between those pieces of data. Referential integrity, audit trails and cascading deletes are just three examples of the type of business rules which the processing models can automate for you. Using a high-level specification language, you can create programs that control how these business processing models are applied. This allows you to concentrate on what the program is to do, rather than how it is to do it. With IBM Cognos PowerHouse 4GL, there is simply less code to write. This leads directly to shorter development times, and faster updating of the application. All of this time saved translates directly into cost savings for your organization.

Data dictionary + specification language = developer productivity

With these two pieces in place -- a data dictionary describing your corporate data and the specification-based PowerHouse language -- it is now possible to create a fully functioning Web program with add, search, change and delete capabilities, using only four statements. For example:

SCREEN web1 HTML
FILE phonebook
GENERATE
BUILD

Industrial-strength data access

Utilizing the renowned native API data handling flexibility of IBM Cognos PowerHouse, you can write applications that have full read/write access to both relational and non-relational data, within the same program. Relational database features, such as stored procedures, can also be called directly from within a IBM Cognos PowerHouse program.

Standard HTML interface

The user interface to all of these Web application programs is written in XHTML, or Extensible HyperText Markup Language, the universal language of Web browsers. IBM Cognos PowerHouse generates a default HTML interface for each program. It also provides options for you to include familiar edit controls, such as checkboxes, radio lists and drop-down pick lists, in the default HTML interface. However, you can enhance the generated HTML file to include anything that can currently be put on a Web page. And since IBM Cognos PowerHouse generates only standard HTML, you can use popular Web authoring tools, such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver or Microsoft's FrontPage, to create those enhancements, adding company logos, graphics, background colors or patterns, text emphasis such as bold, italic or color or even rearranging the entire layout of the HTML page.

Distribute the processing

When it comes to deploying your Web-based applications you will have the flexibility to put them on any of the current IBM Cognos PowerHouse Series 8 application servers. The IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web add-on provides you with flexibility and scalability. Your Web server can run on one machine and your Web applications can run on one or more other machines, and they don't even have to be of the same type.

IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web

The IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web add-on consists of:

IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Server - a modified version of the existing PowerHouse QUICK engine, which deals with Web requests instead of terminal-based users.

IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Dispatcher - ensures that the incoming browser request is passed to an appropriate IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Server process, or to another IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Dispatcher on a different machine. This enables the IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web environment to be distributed over multiple machines, which may be running under different operating systems.

IBM Cognos PowerHouse CGI - a Common Gateway Interface program which takes the incoming browser request and passes it to an available IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Dispatcher. It then waits for the results from the IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Server process which dealt with the request, and returns those results to the user's browser via the site's Web server.

IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Administrator - a Windows-based utility to configure and control the number and location of IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Dispatchers and IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web Servers in your network.

Available platforms

IBM Cognos PowerHouse Series 8 and IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web are currently available across a wide variety of business server platforms, including:

Supported database and file systems

The IBM Cognos PowerHouse application server engine, common to IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web, supports native access to the following database management and file systems:

Note: Not all databases and file systems are supported on all platforms.