HP OpenVMS Systems

Cognos Incorporated provides application development, business intelligence (BI), and performance planning solutions for the automotive, banking, insurance, energy, natural resource, government, healthcare, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical industries. Founded in 1969, Cognos employs over 3,300 people and serves more than 23,000 customers in 135 countries. Cognos products are sold directly and are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. An experienced and award-winning field force of more than 1,800 customer-facing personnel supports the products.

Cognos application development solutions speed time to market by providing application building blocks and eliminating procedural coding. The company's business intelligence and performance planning solutions manage, analyze, and report corporate data to pinpoint enterprise patterns and trends, giving high-level decision makers the information needed for strategic business planning.

HP and Cognos have developed a close working relationship to support application development for OpenVMS systems, and to deliver a unified information infrastructure with end-to-end coverage of all business analysis needs. Together, HP platforms and Cognos solutions provide the scalability and reliability required for business applications, while improving the speed and quality of decision making to create new business opportunities, facilitate enterprise growth, and increase revenue.

» Cognos Axiant 4GL, a high-productivity integrated development environment (IDE)
» Cognos PowerHouse 4GL,a server-based development tool
» Cognos PowerHouse Web, a Web application development tool

» Supporting documents
» Company contact

Cognos Axiant 4GL is a Microsoft Windows® based high-productivity integrated development environment (IDE) for creating and maintaining core business applications that can be deployed in a variety of client/server, server-based, mobile, stand-alone, and Web-based topologies. As a companion product to Cognos PowerHouse 4GL (see below), Axiant provides migration of existing server-centric PowerHouse applications to modern computing environments. When used as a thin-client for application deployment, Axiant 4GL can connect to a PowerHouse 4GL server on an HP AlphaServer running OpenVMS.

Axiant 4GL features and benefits include:

• Maximized developer productivity—developers can build an application just once and deploy it to multiple platforms and databases simultaneously.
• Built-in application models—built-in models of screens, production reports, and volume transactions let developers focus on the business-unique components that need to be added.
• Integration with existing environments—Axiant 4GL can incorporate existing code modules written in C, C++, COBOL, BASIC, or other third-generation languages (3GLs).
• Object-based repository—the major benefits of object-oriented technology—inheritance and reuse—are delivered without the need to learn object-oriented programming languages.
• Advanced deployment capabilities—Axiant 4GL applications can be deployed and re-deployed across various servers, multiple data sources, and PC or terminal user interfaces for optimal processing.

HP AlphaServer systems running OpenVMS support Axiant 4GL developers with the scalability and flexibility needed to efficiently create, deploy, and manage vital business applications in continuously growing enterprises. The OpenVMS platform and Axiant IDE help developers to optimize application performance by using appropriate resources for processing and user interfaces.

» More about Cognos Axiant 4GL

Cognos PowerHouse 4GL is a server-based development environment that supports interactive screens and menus, flexible production reporting, volume batch processing capabilities, and simultaneous access to multiple relational and non-relational data sources. PowerHouse 4GL enables business-critical applications to be written quickly and modified easily, making it ideal for use in businesses such as utility enterprises, universities, technology companies, and investment organizations that require rapid application prototyping and development environments.

PowerHouse 4GL provides the following benefits:

• Productivity—developers can build business applications considerably faster than with a procedural third-generation language (3GL), such as COBOL, BASIC, C, C++, or Java.
  
• Immediate return on investment—when developers first start to use PowerHouse 4GL, many of their basic requirements are handled by its default features.
  
• Power—PowerHouse 4GL eliminates 3GL coding and includes basic validation functions such as data input, entire screen-handling routines, file and database input and output routines, relational database transaction management, concurrency control, and exception handling.
  
• Integration—uses existing data files, database management systems, and applications without requiring costly data conversion.
  

HP OpenVMS systems provide developers with the processing power, availability, and scalability needed to handle complex applications and diverse data sources. Together, HP OpenVMS and Cognos PowerHouse 4GL ensure the rapid development and continuous operation of server-based mission-critical applications in any industry.

» More about Cognos PowerHouse 4GL

Cognos PowerHouse Web is a Web application development tool that enables organizations of any size to create Web-based applications for 24 x 7 business-critical processing. PowerHouse Web leverages the Cognos PowerHouse 4GL server-based development environment for rapid application development and elimination of procedural 3GL coding.

PowerHouse Web includes the following features:

• High-productivity Web application development
• Distribution of application processing loads across multiple heterogeneous servers
• Remote administration of components
• Simultaneous access to multiple relational and non-relational data sources
• Standard HTML user interface that is easily enhanced using Web authoring tools

Web-based applications require high availability and scalability to support a varying number of simultaneous end users. HP OpenVMS systems provide the required flexibility and scalability for enterprises to confidently deploy their e-business applications. Highly available HP OpenVMS systems, combined with the rapid Web-based application development capabilities of Cognos PowerHouse Web, allow businesses to remain competitive and ensure growth in today's demanding and competitive markets.

» More about Cognos PowerHouse Web

» HP Developer and Solution Partner Program (DSPP) Web site

Cognos Incorporated
3755 Riverside Drive
P.O. Box 9707, Station T
Ottawa, ON K1G 4K9
Canada
Tel: +1 (613) 738 1440
Fax: +1 (613) 738 0002
» Cognos Web site

Contact
Robert Berry
Director, Customer Relations
Tel: +1 (781) 313 2270
E-mail: bob.berry@cognos.com

Updated September 1, 2005