What is it?

[cognostechie]

Busines Insight looks like an interactive version of Report Studio except the functions and some other stuff available in RS. Even the menu looks the same as in RS. Seems like it is an interactive version, what I mean is when you drag and drop columns, it shows the data right away like in Query Studio.

Is that what it is supposed to be or am I missing something? If it is what I am thinking it is, I am happy ..it eliminates the need to learn another tool 

I like the functionality of bringing data from external sources..really nice. I used a Framework package, an excel file and joined the Excel file to the Fact Query subject using ProductID and it works !! 

[MFGF]

You mean Business Insight Advanced?  If so, it's a new authoring environment which takes the capabilities of Query Studio, Report Studio Express Mode, most of Analysis Studio and some bits of Report Studio and presents them in a unified authoring environment.  It is still aimed at business authors, so the interface displays "Live" data (like Query Studio) and calculations/filters etc are simple to define, avoiding the use of expression editors etc.

One of it's main ideas is to remove the confusion experienced by some business authors in Cognos 8 - ie do I need to do Report Authoring? Analysis? Financial Reporting? - in Cognos 8, separate studios provided these capabilities to business authors, and they had to decide upfront what kind of authoring they wanted to do.  With Business Insight Advanced, an author can do any/all of these in a single interface.

External data sources are a neat (if slightly dangerous) feature - you need to think carefully about the quality/accuracy of the data in the external file before using it in a report, and some authors will not/cannot make this kind of determination before jumping straight in...

MF.

[cognostechie]

Yup ! Thanks MFGF !

I like the feature of allowing multiple Crosstabs/Lists etc on the same page. The ranking (Top/Bottom) seems to be quite powerful with so many options and the ability to create rank within a ranked set.