Cognos Audit Logging: Demystified

Audit logging is one of many important administrative features available with IBM Cognos BI. However, it tends to confuse ibm cognos administrators with various levels and tables it has for it. For ibm cognos 10.1 (it applies the same to ibm cognos 8 except the grey ones), there's a chapter available in redbook for understanding Cognos Audit Logging.

The redbook (page 503 onward/ Chapter 10.5 Auditing), lists setting up audit db, various audit tables and their definitions and the effect each audit logging level would have in general sense. Although, this definition and effect of levels is generalized in Cognos environment sense, you could set up audit logging higher for a particular component to audit its usage.


Audit database table definitions

Table name	Description
COGIPF_ACTION	Stores information about operations performed on objects
COGIPF_AGENTBUILD	Stores information about agent mail delivery
COGIPF_AGENTRUN	Stores information about agent activity including tasks and delivery
COGIPF_ANNOTATIONSERVICE	Stores audit information about annotation service operations
COGIPF_EDITQUERY	Stores information about query runs
COGIPF_HUMANTASKSERVICE	Stores audit information about human task service operations (tasks and corresponding task states)
COGIPF_HUMANTASKSERVICE_DETAIL	Stores additional details about human task service operations (not necessarily required for every audit entry, for example, notification details and human role details)
COGIPF_NATIVEQUERY	Stores information about queries that IBM Cognos software makes to other components
COGIPF_PARAMETER	Stores parameter information logged by a component
COGIPF_RUNJOB	Stores information about job runs
COGIPF_RUNJOBSTEP	Stores information about job step runs
COGIPF_RUNREPORT	Stores information about report runs
COGIPF_THRESHOLD_VIOLATIONS	Stores information about threshold violations for system metrics
COGIPF_USERLOGON	Stores user logon and logoff information
COGIPF_VIEWREPORT	Stores information about report view requests

IBM Cognos audit and logging levels

System activity type	Minimal	Basic	Request	Trace	Full
System and service startup and shutdown, runtime errors	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
User account management and runtime usage		Y	Y	Y	Y
User requests		Y	Y	Y	Y
Service requests and responses			Y		Y
All requests to all components with their parameter values				Y	Y
Other queries to IBM Cognos components (native query)				Y	Y