CIS 624               Spring 2007                   Assignment 1 – Cognos OLAP Software

 

Due: Start of Class on 02/12/07

 

Task:

                There is a multidimensional data cube available called “Great Outdoors” on a La Salle computer science www server. Access it and the Cognos PowerPlay software by accessing http://www.lasalle.edu/~redmond/teach/624 then looking for “research materials”, then for Cognos software. Following that link will bring you into PowerPlay with a choice of data cubes. Use the “Great Outdoors” link for this assignment!!

 There are 9 tasks described below. Hand in a printout for each. Many also ask questions of you – answer those. We will have approximately ½ of the evening for you to work on the assignment – please ask questions if it is unclear what a task is (generally they are looking into parts of the hypothetical business that seemed interesting). Please put your name on all printouts.

 

Details:

  1. Outdoor Product sales revenues are down. Show revenues by outdoor product subcategories by year. Question: What subcategory experienced the largest revenue decline (in $, not by percent) between 1996 and 1997? (You might want to add a row to help answer this question)
  2. Overall revenues change over the two years is showing mixed results across different locations. Show a clustered bar graph illustrating the change in revenues over the two years by world region. Make sure that the graph emphasizes the desired info!! (i.e. make it EASY to determine the answer)  Question: What world region had relatively flat revenues over the time period?
  3. Biggest revenues are though “Camping Chains”. Show the top 5 camping chains by total revenues (for both years combined) ordered by total revenues. (Have years go across) Question: What is the difference in total revenues between the #1 and #2 selling camping chains? (calculate this by hand based on info in the table).
  4. We are interested in how things are going via the GO Outlets in the Americas. Show by product category (going down), by year (going across), revenues via GO Outlets in the Americas. Question: Which category has the highest revenues total over the two year period?
  5. Show the same revenues as a percent of total 2 yr revenues for the category (e.g. values in the “outdoor products” row would be the percent of the total “outdoor products” revenues for the two year period)  Question: Which category has the highest percentage of its revenues in 1997? (restricted to from GO Outlets in the Americas, as in the previous question)  
  6. Returning to overall revenues in dollars (all products, all locations, …), show a line graph, showing quarterly revenues for the whole two year period for each of the 3 product categories. Make sure your graph emphasizes trends over time.
  7. Show Environmental Line product subcategory revenues (going down), broken down into locations (nested within subcategories, going down), by Year (going across). 
  8. There seems to be a huge increase in revenues of bio-friendly soaps in the Americas. Show revenues for bio-friendly soaps, by soap kind (going down) – show country (within the Americas only) (nested within soap kind, going down) by year (going across). Question: What soap/country combination contributes most towards the increase in dollars of revenues we are investigating?
  9. Question: What city within the U.S. is most responsible for the big jump of RiverKind Soap revenues in the U.S. in 1997?  Show RiverKind Soap revenues by city (going down) and year (within the U.S. only) (going across)