FAP overview

Financial Analysis Publisher (FAP) is delivered with IBM® Cognos® Controller. FAP provides additional ways of solving both in-process reporting requirements, as well as management reporting agendas, and using data without any time lags.

Users want access to consolidated data to perform analytic-style reporting and distribute reports on a global scale. FAP extracts the information from the IBM Cognos Controller relational database and inserts it into a TM1® cube environment. Any changes made to the data in the IBM Cognos Controller database, including those generated by the users or fed from source systems, are automatically propagated through to TM1.

Data from ERP systems feeds into the Controller relational database, trickles into the FAP database, and is published to TM1 cubes. Data can then be accessed from TM1 and compatible tools — Figure 1. FAP overview

FAP combines two different technologies: a relational database technology optimized for transactions and data entry and an OLAP technology optimized for reporting and analytics.

The peak load on FAP occurs during the initial publish, during the closing period, when the majority of changes are processed in IBM Cognos Controller, and during the reporting peaks in the cube.