Let’s look at using PowerPlay to report from our Analysis Services cube. We’ll examine a few of the capabilities within PowerPlay for viewing cube data, and get a feel for the functionality PowerPlay can provide us in reporting for Analysis Services data sources. We have established connectivity to the Warehouse cube via Cognos Connect in the steps above. Next, we’ll initialize PowerPlay and begin exploring our cube.
1. Click the Start button.
2. Select Programs > Cognos EP Series 7.
3. Select Cognos PowerPlay from the submenu that appears.
The Welcome dialog for Cognos PowerPlay appears.
4. Click the Create a New Report button.
The Choose a Local Cube dialog appears. (If the Choose a Remote Cube dialog appears instead, simply click the Local radio button to change to the … Local dialog).
5. Click to select the MSSQL_Warehouse pointer .mdc file we created earlier.
6. Click Open.
PowerPlay opens and displays a default Explorer view of the MSSQL_Warehouse cube, made possible by its connection to the Analysis Services Server via the Pointer cube file we created in an earlier section. The crosstab report we see should resemble this.