Forum Discussion

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
6 years ago

Cognos to Power Bi Migration

Hello Team,

 

i have got a requirement to convert huge number of  Cognos reports (approximately 50000 reports ) to Power BI .

Is there a migration tool available ,what is the best way to achieve this? 

 

As there are huge  number of reports in Cognos  ,effort in re-engineering data ,defining metadata ,define database views and model the Power BI, report creation  are extinsive. Need a best solution to achieve this.Any help ,highly appreciated.

 

Thanks

Krithiga

 

Need Help

7 Replies

  • Nikhil_Kurup's avatar
    Nikhil_Kurup
    Regular Visitor
    6 years ago

    Hi,

    We have created an automation tool that accelerates migration from Cognos to Power BI paginated reports.
    In one particular case we achieved over 70% automation in the migration process.

    If you would like to know more please reach out to me at [email protected]

    Regards
    Nikhil

  • lbendlin's avatar
    lbendlin
    Icon for Super User rankSuper User
    6 years ago

    oh boy.  It is generally not possible to "convert"  reports from one system to the other. The reason that so many reporting solutions exist is that hey all have different philosophies and paradigms.  For example the storage and association design is very much incompatible between Qlik and PowerBI/SSAS Tabular. Not to mention that the visuals selection is likely different too.

     

    Trying to convert from one system to the other verbatim is also known as "fighting the API" - a fight that you cannot win in the long run.

     

    Having said that, the meta data for Power BI reports is contained in the .pbix / .pbit files and the DMVs.  So technically you could create a process that translates your Cognos report meta data into .pbit templates, and that you might then be able to fire up successfully to repull the data etc.  But this is a very complicated process, and will likely have unsatisfactory results.

     

    What you should do instead is rank the Cognos reports by usage/importance, and then only recreate the ones that are actually useful.

    • SaiTejaTalasila's avatar
      SaiTejaTalasila
      Icon for Super User rankSuper User
      2 years ago

      Hi Rituja ,

       

      What ever lbendlin is 100% true.When I started my career I got a project to migrate cognos reports to reportbuilder(power bi).At that time my manager haven't listened our words and we started recreating those reports in report builder it's a nightmare.At last we wasted 2years developing the reports and the client is no more interested to spend any additional amount due to result changes.So,they decided to stick with cognos ,but they moved the reports to latest version of cognos.

       

       

      Thanks,

      Sai Teja 

       

       

  • BobAtSenturus's avatar
    BobAtSenturus
    Regular Visitor
    5 years ago

    Senturus offers Report Insights, a tool for unraveling Cognos reports and data models/packages.  One use case is understanding which pieces and parts of a Cognos model are used by the reports you wish to migrate.  This enables you to quickly and accurately rebuild a minimal Power BI dataset.  Secondly, the parts of the Cognos report are broken down to queries and query subjects so that a Power BI report developer can quickly rebuild the report, referencing the newly built Power BI dataset and any custom logic in the report.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    5 years ago

    Hi Krithiga,

     

    Ironside is a Data Analytics consultancy. We have tools that accelerate this process.  Please contact me at [email protected] to discuss in more detail.   

     

    Regards,

    Tom