Cognos Inc. and Composite Software Inc. on Monday joined forces to combine business intelligence (BI) reporting with enterprise information integration (EII) software.

The partnership is the latest in an increasingly important blending of the two software types that includes moves by Business Objects SA and Actuate Corp.

Composite on Monday also issued Version 3.0 of its flagship software.

The alignment will result in Cognos embedding Composite"s software into the Cognos ReportNet BI tool, the companies said.

New capabilities in Composite 3.0 include enhanced query optimization in the form of Composite Intelligence Query, or Composite IQ; read/write capabilities that enable the updating of views within the product; and a broadened ability to bring in relational or XML data sources that now includes Java calls and custom Java functions, among others. Composite 3.0 is also easier to deploy and administer, CEO Jim Green said.

"Cognos discovered something we were realizing, too. Next-generation reporting is the killer app for EII," Green said.

Philip Russom, an analyst at Forrester Research, agreed that BI and EII are a good fit.

"EII provides greater access options, greater technology for distributed queries, and helps to fill some of the voids in reporting tools," Russom said. "BI and EII have a definite synergy."

Cognos executives certainly think so, enough at least to take a US$4.5 million equity stake in Composite this week.

Cognos is not the only BI vendor to propose marriage with an EII bride, either. Business Objects and Attunity earlier this month outlined a partnership that will see the two companies work together to integrate support for Attunity into Business Objects 6.5 to update data warehouses in so-called real time by transferring just the changes to operational data sources. Actuate last year acquired Nimble Technologies for its EII wares.

"People endeavor to expand their BI by broadening the view of data across the enterprise and that means accessing more and more systems," said Ted Friedman principal analyst at Gartner. "I"d be surprised if EII is a stand-alone market over time. The federation becomes something bigger as part of BI tools."