Analysis Studio is a drill-up drill-down product that allows you to examine and analyse large amounts of data. From this reports can be created and saved to be run in the future. Reports can be output in various formats including HTML, PDF, Excel and text files.

Analysis Studio works with dimensional data, which is data organised into hierarchies and levels. You can filter data, swap rows and columns and sort rows and columns. Data can be shown in a grid as shown above (known as a crosstab) or in a number of chart formats. All the main chart types, such as line, bar and pie charts, are supported.

Data can be nested, for example Sales Territory can be placed within Year. The measures shown will automatically adjust.

Items from the Insertable Objects pane are simply dragged into the grid on the right hand side of the diagram.

Because the data is organised into levels it is summarised data, which makes it easier to analyse and discover its ‘true meaning’.

You can explore relationships between items. For example,

- how much revenue was made by sales teams in the Southern Region in the first quarter?
- Was this greater than the revenue from the Northern Region?

Define Dimensions and Levels. Dimensions break down into levels:

Note that even the lowest level, Team, is a summary of all the members in a team. As you go up the levels the numbers tend to get bigger because they summarise the levels below. Dimensions are based on organisational structure and are built into the package by a data modeller.

Time Dimensions. Most analyses include a ‘time’ dimension, which might consist of say, Year / Quarter / Month. In addition the data modeller might include ‘relative’ time categories such as Current Month, Year to Date etc.

Measures. Measures are also build into your dimensional framework and published to Cognos Connection as part of a package. Typical measures might be revenue and cost.

Sets. You can define ‘sets’ from data and store them in the analysis. Sets are basically a subset of your data. Sets are used to create reports in Analysis Studio.

Drill Through. As well as drilling up and down through levels of a dimension, Analysis Studio allows you to drill through to other reports. This is particularly useful when drilling through from summarised data in Analysis Studio to more detailed information in a report. The report can be written in Query Studio, Report Studio or Analysis Studio.