BI and rich media combine

Cognos and Macromedia have integrated their respective business intelligence and desktop multimedia applications using Web services, in a development that may herald the realisation of the executive's dream of the truly interactive PowerPoint-style interface.

By integrating the Macromedia MX product and Cognos Web Services using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), users can build interfaces using the Flash MX content creation tool with enterprise data from the Cognos Series 7 BI application.

Using a software module called Macromedia Flash Remoting, mobile workers could conceivably do away with PowerPoint in favour of rich media presentations using real-time data sent across the Internet.

The Cognos Web Services package was released overnight, intended to help BI developers link Cognos software to other enterprise applications, as well as supporting Microsoft's .NET platform and the Java 2 Enterprise Edition from Sun Microsystems. A sample application is available to showcase the capabilities of the two applications working in concert.

"Customers are demanding a better Internet experience similar to the richness of traditional desktop interfaces but with the flexibility of distributed web-based applications," said Darryl Gehly, vice president of corporate development at Molecular, the Macromedia partner which developed the sample app.

"The integration of Macromedia Flash MX technology with Cognos' new web services platform aptly displays the power of Cognos Web Services and how it can be leveraged to build different interfaces."