Global software developer Rocket Software has announced Rocket Discover 1.5,  a self-service query and visualization engine that allows business users to query IBM’s Cognos TM1 cubes and Cognos BI content directly through Discover’s IBM Native Connect RESTful API.

The new version is a major expansion of Rocket Discover, taking full advantage of the RESTful API to expose capabilities within Cognos. It can incorporate data from multiple sources including SQL Server and Oracle, as well as the Cognos TM1 cubes. It also connects directly to Cognos Query, supporting interactive queries. This is the start of an ongoing expansion into incorporating streaming social media data into analysis, said Rocket Software Director of BI and Analytics Julianna Cammarano.

The software runs on both Windows and Linux servers and delivers its visualizations via a URL and any Web browser to any end-user device, including mobile devices. Users can drill down from the visualization to the background data. The new version also includes new Presentation features that make it easier for users to communicate their insights and data narratives in a clear framework.

Cammarano said Rocket is working with several IBM labs and expects to expand its access to streaming social media sources, including Twitter, with further announcements expected in the coming year.

“With the importance of social data to many of our clients, we are expanding our use cases into understanding what customers are saying about products and things like that,” Cammarano said. “We need to be able to visualize and understand that data.”

In his recent research alert, “Should You Add Real-Time to Your Batch Repertoire?,” Wikibon Big Data Analyst George Gilbert said that one way for companies to move toward a data-driven future is to expand their existing BI capabilities to include new data sources and streaming data. That appears to be exactly the direction Rocket Software is taking with Rocket Discover.

Image courtesy Rocket Software