Cognos Products and Tools

laurelsandwichSoftware and s/w Development

Nov 25, 2013 (3 years and 10 months ago)

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Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de

Lucian Comanescu
–

Profile BI/Cognos Consultant












Lucian Comanescu

BI/Cognos Consultant





PERSONAL DETAILS

Address:

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Stra
sse 86

60438 Frankfurt

Phone:

+49 177 2149268

(mobile)

+49 69 95155585

(home)

Fax:

+49 (0)3212 2662637

Email:

lucian@comanescu.de

Date/place of birth

25.03.1974, Br
asov, Romania

Nationality

Romanian

Experience

7 years (Cognos)

6 years (java)

Last position

Senior BI/Cognos Consultant


MAIN AREAS OF EXPERTISE:

Business Intelligence with IBM Cognos 8 BI



Framework Manager (versions ReportNet, 8.1, 8.3 and 8.4)



Cognos

8 BI Transformer (Windows and UNIX, version 6.5 to 8.4)



Software Development Kit (SDK), Macro Editor



Cognos Connection with Studios: Report / Query / Event / Analysis and PowerPlay Studio



Metric Designer and Studio



PowerPlay Enterprise Server and PowerPla
y Transformer (Windows/UNIX, v. 6.5 to 7.4)



Older Components and/or Tools (Cognos Architect, Cognos Query, Upfront, Impromptu)

Design of relational and multidimensional models

Modeling metadata relational (Framework Manager) and multidimensional (OLAP)
with Transformer and Framework Manager

Report Authoring (requirements, design, techniques)

Cognos SDK programming

SQL, PL/SQL (Oracle) and database design

UNIX/Linux and MS DOS shell scripting

Object Oriented Analyze and Design and Design Patterns

HT
ML and JavaScript, XML and XSLT



Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de

Lucian Comanescu
–

Profile BI/Cognos Consultant



Overview


Working in a Cognos Competence Center


I was working, in the last seven years, in two Cognos Competence Center for two big banks (the
Risk Intelligence Infrastructure (RII) department of WestLB and Release Clus
ter DWH/BI at
Commerzbank), being responsible for the development, maintenance and deployment of Business
Intelligence Solutions for several risk management projects, covering different aspects of Risk
Management and Reporting for the whole bank, integrati
on of 3rd parties solutions and/or
applications into the reporting landscape (ex. DataNet, JasperReports, cocoon) and developing
and maintaining different inter
-
project interfaces.



Cognos Know
-
how and the Diversity of Cognos Roles


The biggest advantage
of working in different projects is, of course, the diversity of roles I had to
cover in the same time:



consumer, using the IBM Cognos Connection Portal to view personal reports, for business
support, and/or on behalf of the users



business support: build s
imple queries to focus on variances, shift through large amounts of
data, and investigate different areas of business through interactive analyses, ad hoc reports
and/or data extracts



report author: build sophisticated reports for consumers by gathering re
port requirements and
creating the reports for distribution



developer of SDK applications, Cognos script and Decision Stream scripting language



designer/architect: responsible for developing databases (data marts), designing relational and
multidimensional

Framework Manager models, modeling metadata and creating OLAP models



trainer: concept, materials and user trainings in Düsseldorf and London



administrator: manage the deployment of IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, including
installation, configuration,

maintenance, content management, security and system
optimization



Business Knowledge and Support


My former education and all the years of experience of working close with the business
department, have developed a very good business basis
-

not only tha
t I am able to understand
and communicate effectively with business users, but also developed an interest and
understanding for the business processes themselves. I have a very good experience in gathering
business requirements and translating them into te
chnical specifications, negotiating and modifying
those requirements to match the development/IT or company strategy, evaluate the costs and
implications of different alternatives into the IT or business processes and/or evaluate the effects of
different s
olutions into the general IT landscape (how changes in a certain projects will affect other
projects or the interfaces to other projects). And I take my permanent invitation to the most
important reorganization, planning and regular business meetings as a
confirmation of the above.


This very good understanding of business logic and knowledge of pre and post systems coupled
with good knowledge of Java, C++ and PL/SQL allow me to easily and effectively trace and find
implementations problems, answer business

questions and solve different data quality issues from
the front
-
office systems, through data warehouse and risk engines, to the reporting data marts.
These analysis and investigation skills were quickly recognized and are, probably, one of the main
reaso
ns for my long lasting relationship with WestLB and I consider it a big advantage compared
with other candidates.





Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de

Lucian Comanescu
–

Profile BI/Cognos Consultant





Cognos Related Knowledge and Second Level Support


Another strong point I have is my excellent knowledge of "around" Cognos technologies
:



My excellent SQL and PL/SQL knowledge allow me to quickly analyze the performance of
different modeling options and/or report designs, via exported SQL, directly in database or,
based on an optimized SQL to change the model or report for better performan
ce. My
database knowledge was also highly appreciated during test phases (compare reports results
with data extracted directly from database), for support (mainly tracing and finding
implementation problems or data quality issues) and for ad
-
hoc reports an
d data extracts (non
-
standard time series or data requests that had to be extracted directly from database).



The years of experience as java developer not only that allowed me to easily understand and
use the Cognos SDK, but also understand the Cognos inte
rnal processes and sometimes to
find workarounds. Worth mentioning are at least Web Services and SOA architecture,
database connectivity (JDBC), java logging and related technologies like HTTP protocol, HTML
and java script, experience with Apache Web Serv
er and Tomcat.



I also have very good experience with XML and related technologies (XSLT, XPath, XQuery,
Web Services)
-

my automated xslt tool for package/reports extraction and documentation
being quickly generalized to all Cognos projects.



Another Cognos

related area were I can provide an excellent expertise is Security and LDAP:
from the protocol itself to query, design (schema, hierarchy), architecture and topology (with
replication), installation and configuration, administration, ldap java APIs (Netsc
ape, jldap,
JNDI), ldap clients, ldap servers: Netscape/iPlanet/SunOne/Sun DS, OpenLDAP, Active
Directory, different SSO strategy and Trusted Signon Provider and Cognos Namespace
implementation. The fact that I was member of the security redesign team, org
anized by
WestLB User Management, having different presentations and discussing different alternative
strategies, is a proof of those knowledge and skills.



And I cannot close this point without mentioning my UNIX, Linux and Windows skills: from
administrat
ion and tools to excellent scripting skills. My cube generations scripts and RII Queue
were highly recognized and appreciated by my current customer.



One of my best Achievements


A very challenging task was PoRiDa redesign: after less than two years of p
roject life, with
performance problems, in September 2006 I was appointed as member (of a three men team) of
the task force for the project redesign. The expectations were small, but the results overwhelming.
We completely redesign the database schema and
the Framework model, creating a very
performant multi
-
star schema with the minimum needed indexing strategy
-

only exactly those
needed for reporting, completely removed the materialized views, consolidate the portfolio
hierarchy, automatically generated t
he most important (most used) reports
-

introducing reports
burst and other improvements that leaded to improving the ETL
-
Process with almost 40% (under 3
hours), report execution times from 15 to less than 2 minutes, cube generation times from 8 to 2
hour
s. This not only that allowed online analysis (the generation of the original cubes was stopped,
cubes being generated too late), but offered also a dramatically improved user experience:



cube browse time decrease drastically because, using a cube group, w
as possible to generate
6 smaller cubes, one for each KRI (Key Risk Indicator) group with drill through from one cube
to another and to the master cube;



very fast drill through reports for detailed information, already pre
-
filtered with the cube
selection
(and database indexes following very tight this selection);



ready for download reports: pre
-
generated standard reports (bursted per portfolio groups) and
scheduled data extracts



faster report execution due to a parameter map with portfolio version id and r
un id (the
database partitions keys)




Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de

Lucian Comanescu
–

Profile BI/Cognos Consultant




Personal skills


I was also very appreciated, at WestLB, for my interest in the internal processes and my ideas and
contributions to improve those processes. The Cognos Cockpit, Package Documentation Tool and
RII Qu
eue were some of the most remarkable improvements. My open personality and
communication abilities help me develop excellent relationships with colleagues, peers from other
projects, business users and production support team as well as with team and depar
tment
leaders. My excellent analytic skills and abilities to locate problems determined lots of colleagues
and peers to ask my help in solving problems. Because of my abilities to learn quickly and digest
new things, I was almost always selected to test ne
w Cognos versions, check their features and
evaluate their usefulness for my client and take part into several research groups and task forces.



Summary


Probably the main gain of working in multiple projects is the exposure to different aspects of
busine
ss, different project requirements and targets and different types of problems I had to solve
during different points in the projects' life cycles. Each project had its own set of different user and
technical requirements, different targets and constraints
, different types of day
-
to
-
day problems and
support issues. All those, together with my knowledge and experience with the main Cognos
Products, databases and SQL, Security and LDAP, UNIX and shell scripting, Cognos scripting,
java and XML and my personal
skills and abilities will allow me to easily integrate into your projects
and teams and quickly become effective.




Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de

Lucian Comanescu
–

Profile BI/Cognos Consultant


WORK HISTORY

Oct 2009
–


Commerzbank AG, BI/Cognos Consultant



consultant: manage the deployment of IBM Cognos 8
Business Intelligence, incl
uding installation,
configuration, maintenance, content management,
security and system optimizations



development of java SDK applications for
synchronization between Cognos and the bank’s
internal security system

Jan 2004
–

Sep 2009

WestLB AG, BI/Cognos
Consultant



development, maintenance and deployment of
Business Intelligence Solutions for several risk
management projects from Risk Intelligence
Infrastructure (RII) department



report author: gathering report requirements and
creating sophisticated report
s for consumers



designer/architect: responsible for developing
databases (data marts), designing relational and
multidimensional Framework Manager models,
modeling metadata and creating OLAP models



developer of SDK applications, Cognos script and
Decision
Stream scripting language



trainer: concept, materials and user trainings in
Düsseldorf and London



administrator: manage the deployment of IBM Cognos 8
Business Intelligence, including installation,
configuration, maintenance, content management,
security a
nd system optimization

Jul 2003
–

Dec 2004

WestLB AG / Quest Software GmbH, Java Consultant



Architecture, design and implementation of a report
engine and web interface for the Risk Management and
Reporting



Design and implementation for a company wide tes
t
framework, uniform for all projects and all layers of the
applications.

Sep 2002
–

May 2003

Start Amadeus AG / AK Business Solutions GmbH, Java
Consultant



Middleware Implementation and release support for a
Touristic Portal



EJB design and implementation

for an online
reservation system and integration into company’s
portal

Sep 2001
–

Aug 2002

IT Vision Systemhaus GmbH (renamed Vision Systems
GmbH), Senior Developer



Architecture and server
-
side implementation of
middleware components



Database design and

SQL layers



Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de

Lucian Comanescu
–

Profile BI/Cognos Consultant



Sep 2000
–

g畮′〰1

Tr慮sylva湩a⁕ iv敲eity Bras潶Ⱐ,u敳t
J
mr潦敳s潲⁡琠䥔
䑥灡r瑭敮t



Topic “Programming with Java“, 3
rd

year



Topic “Distributed Applications Programming”, master
灲潧p慭m攠⠶
th

year)

Aug 1997

–

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愠
(1〰┠B
敲e慮⁉ v敳瑭敮琠
J

䥔 sisi潮
pys瑥t桡畳⁇m扈
)Ⱐ,敮敲慬⽐r潪散琠䵡n慧敲



Pr潪散琠ta湡g敭敮琠t潲⁳敶敲el⁳潦瑷慲攠灲潪散瑳
潲o
灡r瑳 ⁰牯 散瑳)⁦潲⁴桥omo瑨tr⁣潭灡n



EDUCATION

Sep 1992
–

Jul 1997

“Transylvania” University of Brasov, Romania

Int
ernational Business Relations Department

Sep 1988
–

Jul 1992

Computers High
-
school no. 1, Brasov, Romania



FURTHER EDUCATION and TRAINING

March 2002

TopLink Training, WebGain, Langen

Mai 1996

European Leadership Seminar, AIESEC, Prague

1995
–

1996

Var
ious AIESEC trainings: Leadership, Communication
Skills, Team Building, Project Management



EXTRA
-
CURRICULA ACTIVITIES

09/2006
–


Member of Ratingen Bridge Club

10/1995
–

10/1996

AIESEC Brasov Local Committee President (LCP)

1993
–

1995

Member of AIESE
C (www.aiesec.org) at University
Transylvania, Brasov

Project Manager of various
AIESEC Projects.



LANGUAGE SKILLS

Romanian
–

native

English
–

fluent

German
–

fluent

French
–

conversational



PERSONAL INTERESTS



Bridge

Biking



REFERENCES

Excellent
references available on request.


Page
7

BI/Cognos Tools Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 8
6,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de




Cognos Products and Tools


Cognos 8 Suite:



Framework Manager (versions 8.1, 8.3 and 8.4)



Cognos 8 BI Transformer (Windows and UNIX, version 8.3 and 8.4)



Software Development Kit (SDK) from ReportNet to 8.4



Cognos Connect
ion, Event Studio, Analysis Studio, Query Studio, Report Studio and
PowerPlay Studio (versions 8.1, 8.3 and 8.4)



Metric Designer and Metric Studio (version 8.1)


Cognos Series 7 Suite (version 7.x, ReportNet)



Framework Manager (ReportNet version)



PowerPlay

Enterprise Server and PowerPlay Transformer (Windows and UNIX, versions 6.5
and 7.1 to 7.4)



Software Development Kit (SDK), Macro Editor



Cognos ReportNet with Studios



Decision Stream Designer and scripting language


Older Components and/or Tools



Cognos Ar
chitect,



Cognos Query,



Upfront,



Impromptu and Impromptu Web Reports


Other Cognos Tools



Configuration Manager,



Access Manager,



Map Manager



Apparo FastEdit (1.9)


Database Systems, Knowledge and Tools




Oracle (version 7.x
-

10i),



IBM DB2 7.2
–

9.1



Mi
crosoft SQL Server 9.0



Sybase ASE 15, Sybase IQ 12.x



MySQL (3.x
-

5.x), PostgreSQL (6.x
-

7.x),



MS Access 97, 2000 (with VBA)



FoxPro 2.3, 2.6, 5.0



NCR's Teradata 4.0



SQL, PL/SQL (Oracle), PL/pgSQL (PostgreSQL)



JDBC, ODBC, sqlUnit



Quest's TOAD (7.x
-

9.6),

Computer Associates ERwin (3.5.2, 4.0), Oracle SQLPlus



Operating Systems




Solaris (8
-

10),



Linux (GNU, Red Hat, SUSE),



Windows (from 3.5)



Shell scripting for ksh, bash, Windows/DOS (with NT/2000 extensions)



Page
8

BI/Cognos Tools Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 8
6,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de




LDAP Servers, Tools and APIs




SunOne/iP
lanet/Netscape Directory Server



OpenLDAP



Active Directory



Cognos Access Manager, ldapbrowser, ldapsearch as clients



Cognos Series 7 Namespace structure and schema



Cognos SDK, J2SE JNDI, Netscape LDAP API



Application/Web Servers




Apache Web Server (2.0,
2.2)



Jakarta Tomcat (3.x
-

5.5)



Sun Java System Application Server (SunOne 5.x
-

GlassFish)



BEA WebLogic (5.5
-

7.0)



JBoss Application Server 2.x
-

3.2.5



Inprise (Borland) Application Server
-

4.1, 4.5



IBM's Domino Server (incl. java and notes script)



O
ther Reporting Tools




Jaspersoft BI Suite, iReport, JR eclipse plugin



Apache Cocoon web publishing framework



Programming Languages



Java/J2EE (1.2
-

1.5) with Servlets/JSP, LDAP API, JDBC (see below)



Perl and PHP (basic)



VB (and VBA)



HTML and Java Script



Java APIs and Tools




J2EE APIs: Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Java IDL, JavaMail, Java Message Service (JMS),
Servlets/JavaServer Pages, JDBC, RMI, JDOM, SAX, Swing



Java Webstart



Java IDEs: Eclipse IDE 2.x
-

3.0, Borland's JBuilder (3.x
-

8), Symantec Vi
sual Café 2.5,
WebGain's Visual Café 4.5



Jakarta's Struts Framework (1.0.4, 1.1)



log4j 1.1.3, 1.2



ant 1.4.1






Page
9

BI/Cognos Tools Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 8
6,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de





XML




XML (XSD/DTD, Namespaces), XSLT, XPath, XQuery



WSDL (Apache Axis)



JXP and Apache Cocoon web publishing framework



Standard Java APIs: SAX
, DOM, JDOM, JAXP, Xpath, XQuery



Data Binding: JAXB, Quick 3
-
4, Castor 0.9, BorlandXML



Others APIs: XML:DB



Altova XMLSpy, Liquid XML Studio, Eclipse XML




Testing Software




Rational XDE



Mercury WinRunner 6.02



jUnit framework 3.7, jxUnit 3.1.x, Abbot 0.9,

httpUnit 1.4
-

1.5.x, sqlUnit




Job Scheduling




Control
-
M Integration Suite and Advanced File Transfer



UC4 (including UC4 script language)



Others




OOAD software: Rational Rose 2000, microTool's objectiF, Eclipse UML, Poseidon UML, MS
Visio



Project ma
nagement: MS
-
Project 98, 2000



Change Requests and Reporting & Process Management Tools: TeamTrack, Mantis CRMS



Workflow, Document management, collaboration: CA NIKU



OR mapping tools: WebGain's TopLink and Mapping Workbench 3.6, JBoss Hibernate 2.0.3



Versio
n Management: CVS (WinCVS, Eclipse plugin, JBuilder 6
-
8 integrated CVS client),
Visual Source Safe



Packaging: ant (1.4
-

1.6), RPM 2.x, 3.0



Office software: Microsoft Office 95, 97, 2000 (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access,
FrontPage), StarOffice 5.2
, IBM's Lotus Notes 4.5, 4.6 (incl. Domino Server), KDE and
GNOME



Graphics: Paint Shop Pro 4.1
-

7.0, Corel Draw 7, 8


Page
10

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de



Release Cluster DWH/BI



System Overview

Customer / Industry

Commerzbank AG

Period

2010.01
–

2010.11

Team Size

7 (Cognos Team)

Posit
ion

Consultant

Operating system

Windows 2003 Server

Technology

Cognos BI and Transformer 8.4/8.4.1, Cognos TM1 (9.5),
Apparo FastEdit (1.9), SQL Server 9.0, DB2 8.1/9.1, Sybase
ASE (15.x) und IQ (12.x), Oracle (10i), SDK Applications (Java
and .NET)



System Summary

Very complex Cognos Environment with 2 parallel production environments (one with 11
Servers and one with 5), test/prelive system and 3 development environments, with
different Cognos products (BI, Metric, TM1 and Transformer), for more that

20 projects
(Datamarts or Reporting Systems).



Main Responsibilities



Design and implementation of a production environment
–

a distributed Installation on 4
Servers with terminal server (Citrix) clients



Proof of Concept for connecting SAS data as Cognos

datasources



Upgrade to Cognos 8.4.1 and DB2 Version 9.1



Development of several SDK Tools for triggering Cognos jobs/events remotely from
other servers and different administrative tasks (constraints on report output versions,
corporate design usage and ot
her scripts for automatic changes to the content).



Audit for BI projects
–

analysis of Framework Manager models and the most used
reports to solve performance problems or find optimizations



User support for developing new reports and/or changing current on
es



Second Level Support





Credit Watchlist



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

Commerzbank AG

Period

2010.01
–

2010.11

Team Size

11 (2 Cognos Developers)

Position

Consultant and Developer

Operating system

Windows 2003 Server

Technology

Cognos
8.4/8.4.1, SQL Server 9.0, Apparo FastEdit (1.9),
Sagent ETL, UC4 (5.0)




Page
11

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de




Project Summary

The project was setup as a warning system for the credit evaluation process. The whole
portfolio was monthly analyzed and several criteria checked in order to extr
act a list of
possible defaults. The watchlist was company wide and the credit officers where allowed to
see only parts of it (depending on a complex security concept) in order to comment, delete
or add new credits to the list.




Main Responsibilities



De
velopment of reports with Report Studio and Query Studio and changes to very
complex reports



Development of Apparo Business Cases to allow users to write the comments back to
the database and manually change ratings



User support for changing personal repor
ts and creating new ones



Technical Support





Cognos Sync (SDK)



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

Commerzbank AG

Period

2009.10
–

2009.12

Team Size

3 (1
Developer
)

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows 2003 Server

T
echnology

Cognos 8.4/8.4.1 Software Development Kit (SDK), Active
Directory 2003, Company’s Security Management System,
Java (1.5), Eclipse (3.0), UC4 (5.0)




Project Summary

For the integration of the Cognos portal into the existing IT architecture was

necessary to
connect the Cognos Security with the company’s security management system. This was
realized with a java application, based on Cognos Software Development Kit (SDK) that
retrieved the users, groups and roles from the company’s wide system and

synchronized it
with Cognos internal security.




Main Responsibilities



Technical specifications and design of the connector to the bank’s Management
System



Design and Implementation of the java application



UC4 scripts for the automatisation of the whole

process






Page
12

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


PoRiDa
-

Position Risk Datamart



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2006/09
–

2009/09

Team Size

8 (3 developers)

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 10

Technology

Cognos 8.1/8.3/8.4 Framework Manager, Report Studio and
Query Studio, PowerPlay Transformer 7.3/7.4/8.4, PowerPlay
Enterprise Server, Oracle 9i/10i, SunOne 5.2/Active Directory
2003



Project Summary

14 multidimensional cubes, over 200 reports built on
a daily basis from over 11 Mio trade
information records and over 48 Mio fact records, designed for a quick (but detailed)
analyze of the first results from the main risk engine for a first impression of the daily
results.



Main Responsibilities



see “One

of my best Achievements” above



several releases including changes into the database and Framework Model



minor transformer models changes



several changes in the current reports and development of new reports



user support in creating and changing personal r
eports



user training (Düsseldorf and London)



integration of cubes and reports into the scheduling system




MaRiDa
-

Market Risk Datamart



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2004/01
–

2009/09

Team Size

ca. 20 (4
-
6 developers)

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

Cognos 8.1/8.3/8.4 Framework Manager and Report/Query
Studio, PowerPlay Transformer 6.5/7.1/7.3/7.4/8.4, PowerPlay
Enterprise Server, Oracle 8/9i/10i, Net
scape 4/iPlanet
5.1/SunOne 5.2/Active Directory 2003



Project Summary

With 63 multidimensional cubes, over 600 standard reports, interactive reports and
status/process reporting module, MaRiDa was the main system in Risk Management and
Controlling for r
isk and P&L reporting on a daily basis and historical data, methods back
testing and portfolio stress testing. The data mart was an Oracle database containing more
than 10 years of data for all bank units (from individual traders to bank level aggregates)
with more than 400 measures (mostly with external rollup) available for a single node. The


Page
13

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


process of filling the data from the main risk engines and other systems was also very
complex and required the cubes/reports being generated multiple times a day.



Main Responsibilities



implementation of Best
-
of concept (unified cube models to display only the best
available figures) that reduced the number of cubes to 39, visibly reducing the
maintenance costs



more than 1000 change requests for different cubes and

report changes and/or new
cubes and reports



migration from Impromptu/Query to ReportNet and later to Cognos8 (8.1/8.3/8.4)



design and implementation of the first MaRiDa dashboard report (one pager) and,
later, extending the concept to weekly and monthly e
xecutive summary and location
executive summaries



developed custom user reports and, later, standard board reports based on a
PowerPlay multidimensional model



prestudy for migration to Transformer 8.3/8.4, replace the Series 7 Namespace
security with the W
estLB LDAP (Active Directory) standard security model and Single
Signon



replication of the Series 7 Namespace into a common tree LDAP structure to be used
by non
-
Cognos applications, simplifying User Management tasks (perform changes
only in the Cognos Acc
ess Manager and replicate them for other projects)



extensive business/user support and adhoc requests



replacing the old queuing mechanism with RII Queue and Control
-
M





CARPE
-

Central Analysis & Reporting Portfolio Engine



Project Overview

Customer
/ Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2007/08
–

2009/09

Team Size

6 (2 developers)

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

ReportNet, Cognos 8.1/8.3/8.4 Framework Manager and
Report/Query Studio,
PowerPlay Transformer and PowerPlay
Enterprise Server 7.1
-

8.4,

Oracle 9i/10i, iPlanet 5.1/SunOne 5.2/Active Directory 2003



Project Summary

13 multidimensional cubes and over 200 Cognos 8 standard reports with data from
different data sources for an
integrated, web based, analysis, monitoring and reporting tool
for Basel II requirements and the internal credit model showing the main KRIs and capital
requirements, concentration and diversification per sectors and regions within the WestLB
Portfolio cor
related with the internal rating procedures.



Main Responsibilities



several changes in the cubes and Framework Manager models



changes in the current reports and development of new ones



user support in creating and changing personal reports



technical seco
nd level support




Page
14

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


DataNet



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2008/06
–

2008/12

Team Size

4 (Düsseldorf)

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

Cognos 8.3 and 8.4
Framework Manager and Report/Query
Studio, Oracle 10i, SunOne 5.2



Project Summary

DataNet is a reporting module containing a pre
-
packaged suite of 12 Cognos8 models,
queries and reports offered by Misys for its loan management product, Loan IQ.



Main

Responsibilities



installation and customization of the whole suite including downgrade of Framework
Manager models to 8.1



integrate Load IQ security with Cognos Series 7 Namespace



user support and training



Cognos Cockpit



Project Overview

Customer /

Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2008/03
–

2008/06

Team Size

4 (Düsseldorf)

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

Cognos 8.1/8.3/8.4, Cognos Software Development Kit (SDK)



Project Summar
y

Administrative web pages (add
-
on to Cognos Connection), based on a collection of
different SDK servlets, to perform administrative tasks in a very convenient way. The most
used functionality was: remove reports output, change cube and cube views gateways

(before or after deployment), list the content store based on different filters (like package,
user role/group, views on a selected cube/report), change folders access permissions (e.g.
add a new user group to a folder and all subfolders that do not inher
it parent's permissions
or replace one user role/group with another).


I have also developed a set of scripts (based on Cognos SDK) to trigger jobs and/or
reports from shell scripts and allow the integration of Cognos reports into the scheduling
system of
the bank (RII
-
Queue and Control
-
M).



Main Responsibilities



wrote the most part of the functionality (JSP and Java Servlets with Cognos SDK)



integrate the cockpit into p2pd (make it a web application that shared the same login
with Cognos connection)



inte
gration in the Job Scheduling (RII
-
Queue and Control
-
M)




Page
15

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


Trusted Signon Provider and Single Signon (SSO)



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2008/01
–

2008/03

Team Size

1

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating sy
stem

Windows XP / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Technology

Cognos 8.3, Cognos Software Development Kit 8.3, Java 1.5,
OpenLDAP 2.2/Active Directory 2003



Project Summary

Customer authentication and authorization solution for the Common Data warehouse
Plat
form (future unique bank wide Cognos platform). CDP was the first project that moved
away from the Cognos Series 7 Namespace, using the company standard Active Directory
infrastructure. Due to the large number of users and groups in the 4 separate Active
D
irectory servers, the performance on Cognos was very poor. My solution was a
replication tool to replicate only CDP relevant users and groups and implementation of a
custom Java Trusted Signon Provider that authenticate the users against the master Active
Directory, but uses, for authorization, the lighter OpenLDAP replica.



Main Responsibilities



the complete design and implementation (SDK interface
INamespaceTrustedSignonProvider) and integration into Cognos portal



pre
-
study for a full implementation of
the Cognos INamespace interface



pre
-
study for SSO with Apache NTLM module and Active Directory native security
(Cognos gateway and content store on Windows machine with IIS Web server)





RoR
-

Return on Risk



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

West
LB AG / Bank

Period

2007/01
–

2007/06

Team Size

18 (2 Cognos Developers, 2 PL/SQL Developers)

Position

Developer (Cognos and PL/SQL), MaRiDa technical consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

Cognos 8.1 Metric Designer, Met
ric Studio and Report Studio,
Framework Manager 8.1, PowerPlay Transformer 7.3
-

8.4,
Oracle 9i, SunOne 5.2



Project Summary

Datamart for Economic Capital key risk indicators calculation and appropriate control of the
Credit Risk Model: fine tuning of t
he stand
-
alone risk assessments and the model, regional
and sector weights based on an internal rating model, providing board and management
with a full range of Scorecards to help monitor, measure and manage corporate
performance. Very complex, graphical
oriented reports with drill
-
down or drill
-
through to
detail reports and analysis for additional information or context, conditional formatting and
exception highlighting draw users' immediate attention and exception
-
based alerts to


Page
16

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


monitor performance on a

daily, weekly, or monthly basis and get immediate visibility of
key performance indicators (KPIs) for corrective action and rapid decision
-
making.



Main Responsibilities



technical requirements and design of the ETL Process to load metrics from MaRiDa



de
sign and implementation of a new complex multidimensional cube



design and implementation of a very complex scorecarding environment, with several
metric types and metrics, grouped on in a regional perspective



design of new Report Studio reports (migration
of old reports from the old java
-
based
application)




Cognos License Management and Housekeeping



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2006/09
–

2006/12

Team Size

1

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

W
indows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

Cognos SDK 8.1/8.3/8.4, Netscape 4/iPlanet 5.1/SunOne 5.2/

Active Directory 2003, Java 1.4/1.5, Netscape SDK, Java JAD

API



Project Summary

Integration of the Cognos Audit sample package with custom extensions f
or Cognos
License Management (statistics on licenses usage and separation on different projects,
disable/delete users that did not logged on in the last x months) and Content Store
Housekeeping (list/delete reports output older than x days, list/delete rep
orts and report
views not used in the last x days).



Main Responsibilities



integration of Cognos Audit sample into the production environment



XML data source to read all reports and cube view from Content Store



ldap extraction (java) and xslt transformat
ion to assign users/licenses per projects






Page
17

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


CAFE
-

Cognos Automated File Extractor



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2006/01
–

2006/06

Team Size

1

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / S
un Solaris 9/10

Technology

Cognos SDK 8.1/8.3/8.4, Java 1.4/1.5



Project Summary

SDK tool to export the generated reports from the Content Store and made them available,
in a more convenient way, to users and, in the first hand, to other systems for fu
rther
processing. The two main advantages were the easy integration into the job scheduling
systems and the big flexibility in choosing the export destination: file system (both UNIX
and windows over ftp/sftp/Connect Direct), email, and http remote call to

other systems.



Main Responsibilities



idea, the technical concept and specifications



wrote scripts for ftp, sftp and http client download



deployment into the productive environment





Scheduling System (RII Queue)



Project Overview

Customer / Indu
stry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2005/03
-

2005/06

Team Size

1

Position

Developer

Operating system

Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

Oracle 9i, TOAD 8, ERWin 4, bash



Project Summary

Simple, but very reliable and powerful, job scheduling system for cube/repo
rt generation,
batch processing and other automated tasks. A very simple event
-
trigger model
architecture, implemented only with shell scripts and PL/SQL, offering basic scheduling
functionality: event (file marker, database, external) trigger, time and us
er triggers, and
resource capacity and build priorities. The shell
-
based design made it possible, with
minimum efforts, to migrate it, after 2 years, to Control
-
M.



Main Responsibilities



the idea and the complete design and implementation (using only a c
ouple of PL/SQL
procedures and functions and shell scripts)



migration of all tasks to Control
-
M





Page
18

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


Processing Overview



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2004/06
-

2004/09

Team Size

1

Position

Developer

Operating system

Su
n Solaris 9/10

Technology

Oracle 9i, TOAD 8, ERWin 4, bash



Project Summary

Web application for internal process monitoring and reporting. It had a quick overview with
all important information on one page (Warnings/Errors, currently or soon processing
, last
processed MaRiDa Run, external files that contained errors and or missing/invalid user
actions), Cube and Report Status Information (cube/reports start and end time, processing
status and so on), external file delivery towards MaRiDa (are all files
delivered, what is in
the files, when were they delivered, are there problems, what are the error messages).

It was initially implemented in Cognos Query. Then, due to the limitations of Query, in
Apache Cocoon and later integrated in Cognos 8 (as xml data

source).



Main Responsibilities



create a generic workflow that from any xsp page can create a html/xls/xml output



integrate WestLB look and feel (standard styles for web applications)



retrieve processing data in a Cognos xml data source format and integ
rate it into the
main package




Package Documentation Tool



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2004/01
-

2004/03

Team Size

1

Position

Developer

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

ReportNet, XSLT, J
ava 1.4, Xalan XML Parser



Project Summary

XSLT transformation sheets to extract all the reports and models from a deployment
archive, commit and tag them into CVS and generate a summary html documentation for
the whole package
-

reports list with all t
heir queries, prompts, filters, author and other
statistics.



Main Responsibilities



create a xslt transformation sheet to extract the model and reports from a package



scripts for cvs (source repository) interaction



xslt sheets to extract and write to htm
l the most important parts of reports



undergo modifications so as to fit to Cognos 8 (initially developed for ReportNet)





Page
19

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


JasperReports Engine with web front
-
end



Project Overview

Customer / Industry

WestLB AG / Bank

Period

2003/06
-

2003/12

Team Si
ze

1

Position

Developer, external Consultant

Operating system

Windows XP / Sun Solaris 9/10

Technology

Java 1.4, Eclipse IDE, JDBC, Impromptu Web Reports



Project Summary

Custom, java/xml based solution, as replacement for Impromptu Web Reports, for
standard
reports and data extracts. The JasperReports Report Engine was generating pdf, xls and
csv reports and the complex web application was responsible for managing reports output
(save, email, print) and distribution (allow user, based on complex perm
issions, to
download the reports.



Main Responsibilities



Architecture and design of the entire Report Engine and web interface



Implementation of most of the server components



Integration of Jasperreports framework and several extensions



migrate reports f
rom Impromptu and later migrate reports to Cognos 8




Older java projects details in a separate file (LucianComanescu.profile.java.en.doc) or
available on request.



Page
20

BI/Cognos Projects Overview

Lucian Comanescu

Erna
-
Pinner
-
Strasse 86,

60438 Frankfurt

Mobile:
+49 177 2149268

Home:
+49 69 95155585

Email:
lucian@comanescu.de


Teaching and Training




Mar 2001
–

Jul 2001, guest professor at University “Transylvani
a”, Brasov

Topic

„Distributed Applications Programming“

Audience

master programme, 6
th

year

Hours/week

4

Topics covered

Java sockets / RMI, EJB, CORBA, (DCOM)




Sep 2000
–

Feb 2001, University “Transylvania”, Brasov

Topic

„Programming with Java“

Aud
ience

3
rd

grade, IT Department

Hours/week

2

Topics covered

Java, OOP, Networking, Threads, Streams, Swing,
JDBC, RMI, Applets, Servlets




1998
–

2001 Java related training inside the company, in English and Romanian

Writing very didactical and visual
training materials, together with creating examples and
exercises designed to help trainers learn and teach Java quickly, and to help trainees
gather, in a short time, all the necessary knowledge to program under Java.


The materials cover the following t
opics: Java basics (object oriented design, Java
language, streams, applets, networking, threads, AWT), Java advanced (serialization, JFC
-
Swing, JDBC, RMI), JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans, Servlets/JSP), CORBA for
VisiBroker Java.




2004
–

2009 Cognos
related training, in English and German

Writing very simple and intuitive training materials, together with creating examples and
exercises designed to help trainees learn quickly and reuse, in real life, the topics just
learned.


The training covered the
following topics: Cognos Query, Cognos Report Studio,
PowerPlay Web basics and different project related topics.