Services offered by IBM Cognos BI

Agent service

The agent service is responsible for running agents. This service runs the conditions and creates and stores the generated event list. The service determines which tasks to execute and forward those tasks to the monitor service for implementation.

additionally to running agents, the agent service also runs two other types of specialized tasks:

•  Stored procedures using IBM 
•  Cognos Report Server
•  Web service tasks 

Annotation service

The annotation service enables the addition of explanation to reports using IBM Cognos Business Insight. These comments keep on throughout different versions of the report.

Batch report service

The batch report service manages background requirements to run reports and provides output on behalf of the monitor service.

Content manager service

The content manager service interacts with the content store. It performs object manipulation functions such as add, query, delete, update, move, and copy. It also handle the content store management functions, such as import and export.

cache service

The cache service enhance the overall system performance and IBM Cognos Content Manager scalability by caching frequent query results in each dispatcher.

Data movement service

The data movement service manages the execution of data movement tasks in Cognos BI. Data movement tasks, for instance Builds and Job Streams, are created in the IBM Cognos Data Manager Designer and are available to IBM Cognos BI.

Delivery service 
As the name implies, the delivery service delivers content. Email, news items, and account output that is written to the file system are examples of content that is handled by the delivery service. Part of this service is a unrelenting email queue that is in place to guarantee that the items are forwarded to the configured SMTP server.

Event management service

The event management service is the service that handles scheduling. Part of the scheduling aspect is the control over cancelling, suspending, and releasing scheduled tasks. For odd jobs that are already entered the queue, requests to cancel, release, or suspend are forwarded from the event management service to the monitor service.

The information found as part of the Upcoming Activities task in the IBM Cognos administration console is also provided by the event management service.

Graphics service
The graphics service produces graphics on behalf of the report service. Graphics can be generated in the following formats:

• Raster
• Vector
• Microsoft Excel XML
• Portable Document Format (PDF)

Human task service

The human task service enables the creation and management of human tasks. A human task such as report sanction can be assign to individuals or groups on an ad hoc basis or by any of the other services.

Index data service

The index data service provides basic full-text functions for storage and retrieval of terms and indexed summary documents.

Index search service

The index search services provides search and drill-through functions, including lists of aliases and examples.

Index update service

The index update service provides write, update, delete, and administration functions.

Job service

Before jobs can be executed, they must first be prepared, meaning that the steps of a job must be analyzed for issues such as circular dependencies in nested jobs and declaration for run options that are part of the jobs. The job service completes these tasks and then sends the job to the monitor service for execution.

Log service

The log service creates log entries that are received from the dispatcher and other services. The log service is called in spite of  which logging output is specified (for example database, file, remote log server, and so forth).

Metadata service

The metadata service provides support for data lineage information that is displayed in Cognos Viewer, IBM Cognos Report Studio, IBM Cognos Query Studio, and IBM Cognos Analysis Studio. Lineage information includes information such as data source and calculation expressions.

Metric studio service

The metric studio service provides the IBM Cognos Metric Studio user interface for the purposes of monitoring and entering performance information.

Migration service: 
The migration service manages the migration from IBM Cognos Series 7 to IBM Cognos BI version 10.1.

Monitorservice

The monitor service handles all of the requests set to run in the background, including scheduled tasks, reports that are set to run and then email the results, and jobs. Because the monitor service can receive more requests than can be executed, it also queues requests and waits for resources to become available for the required service. 

When a service indicates that there is adequate bandwidth, the monitor service then forwards the task to the right service for execution. Because the monitor service handles all of the background tasks, writing history information about the individual task executions is the responsibility of the monitor service. The exceptions to this process are the history details for deployment and IBM . Cognos Search indexing tasks, which are written directly to the content store using the IBM Cognos Content Manager component.

The information found as part of the Current Activities task in the administration console is also provided by the monitor service.

Presentation service

The presentation service provides the display, navigation, and administration capabilities in IBM Cognos Connection. It also receives generic XML responses from other services and transforms them into output format, such as HTML or PDF.

Another function of the presentation service is to send the saved content when a request to view saved output is made. If a request to execute the report is made from inside of Cognos Viewer, the request is handled by the report service.

Query service

The query service manages Dynamic Query Mode requests and proceeds the result to the requesting batch or report service.

Report data service

The report data service manages the transfer of report data between IBM Cognos BI and applications that consume report data, such as IBM Cognos Analysis for Excel, IBM Cognos Office Connection, and IBM Cognos Mobile.

Report service
The report service manages interactive report requests to run reports and provides the output for a user in IBM Cognos Business imminent or in one of the IBM Cognos studios.

System service: 

The system service is used by the correspondent to obtain application configuration parameters and provides methods for interfacing with backdrop strings that are supported by the application for support of multiple languages.