IBM Cognos Analytics - What is a Package?

I use IBM Cognos Analytics (11.1R2 to be exact) with NetApp OnCommand Insight Data Warehouse. These days, there seems to be lots of different names for things, that - when you dig down to it - are all the same thing.

Packages are essentially databases or views or tables. An example, the package called ‘Inventory’ as shown with the available options below:

Enrich package, Create report, Create dashboard, Create data module, Create data set, Properties, Take ownership, Copy or move, Create shortcut, Share, Delete

Image: Options for a package (database) in Cognos

In OCI DWH world, the databases are:

+-------------------------+

| Database                |

+-------------------------+

| information_schema      |

| dwh_capacity            |

| dwh_capacity_efficiency |

| dwh_cloud_cost          |

| dwh_custom              |

| dwh_fs_util             |

| dwh_inventory           |

| dwh_performance         |

| dwh_ports               |

| dwh_reports             |

| tmp                     |

+-------------------------+

You will notice that not all the packages are databases (in fact, probably only one in the screenshot is). The official definition of a package is:

“A package is a subset of a model, which can be the whole model, that is made available to the IBM Cognos Analytics application. ... Not all types of packages can be used in all Cognos Analytics components. Only Reporting can use all types of packages traditionally supported in earlier versions of Cognos Analytics.” - https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEP7J_11.1.0/com.ibm.swg.ba.cognos.ca_gtstd.doc/c_gtsd_manage_data_package.html

Contrast the above with the options you get for a report (Chargeback in the example below):

Run as, Edit report, Create report view, View versions, Properties, Copy or move, Create shortcut, Share, Delete

Image: Options for a report in Cognos

To find out what Source Package or Data Module a report is using, go to the advanced properties.

Image: Report Source Package or Module = ... Packages > Inventory

A random thing learnt ...

mysql> select * from table_name LIMIT 5;

... which shows you all the columns in the table, just limits the output to 5.