Best Practices for Cognos Transformer

IBM Cognos Transformer is a powerful tool for creating cubes out of your data for faster analysis. These cubes are quite helpful as you could take them and do analysis on them. There are ways to make it secure too. However, what we often hear are issues about performance in Transformer.

Well, for that one must read the following guide about how to model a PowerCube.
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/dm/cognos/modeling/powerplay_transformer/transformer_in_production.pdf

It's a really helpful documentation covering step by step procedure of cube and the best practices to get the max out of a PowerCube.

Let me know if you have any doubts on this by your comments.

Things to take care of while applying fix packs in IBM Cognos

Recently, I worked with a client who was facing problems after they applied fix pack to their Cognos environment. According to them fixpack was a terrible disaster and nothing seemed to work.

After careful investigation and analysis, I found out that they were missing an important step in applying the fix pack.

Since fix packs involves modified binaries, they need to be linked and working all in conjunction with each other. You cannot have a different versions of binaries working together perfectly.

That's why cmplst is there in every IBM Cognos installation to make everything work in sync with version.

Anyway, coming back to the point. If you have a IBM Cognos deployment working on servlet container like apache tomcat, all you need to do is

1. Stop IBM Cognos service.
2. Apply fix pack installables.
3. Start IBM Cognos service and you'll be done.


However, if you are running IBM Cognos on an application server like IBM Websphere or JBoss etc, the steps are little different and lengthy.

1. Stop IBM Cognos service.
2. Apply fix pack installables.
3. Rebuild the ear/war files.
4. Redeploy the ear/war file.
5. Start IBM Cognos service.

The client was using IBM Websphere and doing the steps for apache tomcat, which was the cause of the fiasco that happened.

Please follow above steps while applying fix packs. I'm aware it's documented somewhere however people do mistakes.

64-bit mashup: Cognos on Websphere Application Server

My earlier blog post about integration of Cognos with Websphere Application Server was based on 32-bit versions. Recently, someone contacted me as they were facing problems because they had 64-bit versions of both Cognos and Websphere Application Server (WAS that we call, for short).

It was showing some CAMCrypto.dll error. I reviewed the steps they had followed (actually they followed steps from my blog-post ;) ). So, I thought of putting this little post about initial analysis.

Whenever you are trying to run Cognos over Websphere Application Service, please

1. Make sure both are using same version of java, otherwise it will cause unacceptable behaviour.
2. Make sure you've copied bcprod*.jar (and db2 jars, if using db2 as Content Store) into <java>/lib/ext.
3. Double check the ports used by Websphere profile and Cognos environment in Cognos configuration.

Well, this was all correct. There's one small change for playing with 64-bit versions. In step 23, of deploying Cognos over WAS, change PATH to point to <your Cognos installation directory>\bin64 instead of <your Cognos installation directory>\bin for 32-bit versions.


64-bit versions lets your Cognos use more memory than 2Gbyte limitation of 32-bit JVM. So, that you could have more resources for your Cognos.

Let me know, if you still face issues.

Deploying IBM Cognos 10.1 on IBM Websphere 6.1

Prerequisites:


1. IBM Cognos 10.1 installation.
2. IBM Websphere 6.1 installation.

Preparing IBM Websphere

1. After you have installed IBM Websphere, a profile is created by default.

2. It is recommended that you create a new profile for Cognos.

3. Launch “Profile Management Tool” from IBM Websphere installation.

4. Click Next

5. Select “Application Server” and click “Next”.

6. Choose “Typical Profile Creation” and click on “Next”

7. If you want to enable administrative security, provide a username and password.

8. Review the profile settings, also note down the HTTP transport port from here (this would be used in configuring Congos). Click on “create” to to finish.

9. Your profile would be created in few minutes. Window would be like this

 

10. When complete, it'll ask you to launch “first steps console”. Click on finish to launch that.

11. In first steps console, click on “start server” to start your server. Administrative console can only be launched after the server has started. Alternatively, you can start server by

12. While starting a server, screen would look like this

13. On successful start of server, the above window closes automatically. Then launch administrative console by

14. Administrative console would look like this. Provide credentials which were used while creating profile to login.

15. Welcome page of IBM Websphere would look like this.

16. On the left hand side, expand “servers” then click on “application servers”. You'll see “server1” in the right pane

17. Click on “server1”. You'll see a lot of configuration settings.

18. Under “Server Infrastructure”, navigate to “Java and Process Management” → “Process Definition”.

19. Under “Additional Properties”, click on “Java Virtual Machine” to set JVM parameters for Cognos.

20. Set Initial and Max heap sizes for JVM. Click on OK to finish.

21. Now, under “Java Virtual Machine”, click on “Environment Entries”.

22. Click on New to create a new environment variable.

23. Give name as “PATH” and value as “<your Cognos 10 installation>\bin”. Click on OK. 

24. Click on “Save” to save your changes to configuration.

Preparing Cognos 10.1

1. Copy “bcprov-jdk14-134.jar” from

 <%Cognos 10 Installation%>\bin\jre\6.0\lib\ext to <%IBM Websphere%>AppServer\java\jre\lib\ext.

2. Create an environment variable “JAVA_HOME” with value

<%IBM Websphere%>AppServer\Java\jre.

3. Launch Cognos 10.1 Configuration.

4. Using the port number identified in step 9 of “preparing IBM Websphere”. In our case it's 9081. Modify the port numbers in URI of dispatcher and content manager

5. Don't forget to modify port in Portal Services.

6. Delete Cognos Tomcat Service Configuration under IBM Cognos Services.

7.  Save Cognos Configuration.

8. In menu, go to Actions-> Build Application Files.

9. By default, IBM Cognos is selected and Application Server Type is Websphere. No need to change, click on Next.

10. Again, by default EAR file is selected. Change location path where .ear file would be generated, if required.

11. After finishing, 'p2pd.ear' file would be generated in your <%Cognos 10 Installation%>.

Integrating Cognos 10.1 with Websphere.

1. Launch Websphere Administrative Console. Provide credentials and login.

2. On left hand side, expand “Applications”, click on “Install new application” and browse and select 'p2pd.ear' that was build in earlier steps. No need to provide any information in context root. Click next.

3. Continue with default settings. Click next.

4. On next page, select the check-box before IBM Cognos. And click on next.

5. Again on next page, select the IBM Cognos module. And click next.

6. On summary page, click finish to complete deployment.

7. After you click finish, Websphere will install the application for you. Your page would look like this. Click on save to save the changes. Restart Websphere to start Cognos.