Future of this blog and other things.

As of 9th April 2013, I left IBM to explore other things for my career. I worked with IBM for about 3 years and learned a lot.

IBM Cognos is a really awesome piece of software if you work on it. Sometimes it doesn't seem to work the way you expect it to, but it's not always software's fault. Through my experience, I learned there are ways to deal with IBM Cognos and that's why IBM certified professionals and there's so much talks and best practices documents.

As I leave IBM, I would not have any access to help from IBMers. However, I would be still willing to answer any queries that you have regarding IBM Cognos. You can submit your questions here.

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.

How to enable 64-bit gateway in Cognos 10.2

With IBM Cognos 10.2, IBM introduced 64-bit gateways to be more efficient. Well, this new features isn't enabled by default when you install IBM Cognos 10.2

As a result, there's a step that you would have to follow to make your gateways run in 64-bit mode.
You'll have to open command prompt on Windows operating system and terminal on Linux/UNIX system.

Navigate to <Cognos 10.2 Installation Location>\cgi-bin\ folder

On Windows, type and run

copyGateMod.bat 64bit

On Linux/UNIX, type

./copyGateMod.sh 64bit

As a result, the 64-bit gateway files are copied from the cgi-bin/lib64 directory to the cgi-bin directory.

The official IBM documentation for this is located here.

Customizing error messages in IBM Cognos 10

IBM Cognos works pretty well as designed. If there's something wrong with it, it tries to help user understand the problem by throwing the error message with an optional stack trace of request and what went wrong. There are certain logging options to dig that further too.

However, sometimes it's too geeky for business users to understand the error messages. Some clients want to modify those error messages to make a better sense out of it. Some might add contact information, about who to contact in such cases to it. Well, you've multiple advantages of modifying the error codes by yourself.

IBM Cognos 10 gives you the flexibility to do so. Moreover, not only it allows your to modify error messages, it even allows you to separate them out for various languages your users might be using.

For modifying error messages, you can check out following link in product documentation of IBM Cognos 10.
Please note that XX is for language code. For ex. EN is for English, ES for Spanish etc.

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/cbi/v10r1m1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.swg.ba.cognos.ug_ldk.10.1.1.doc%2Fc_filestolocalizeincognosreportnet.html

 

IBM Cognos 8.4.1 Fix Pack 4 is out!

Fix packs are great! IBM just released fix pack 4 for IBM Cognos 8.4.1 BI. You can get the details here http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24031582

Well, if you want to know what's been fixed, you can get the details here http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27023702

Please go through the standard procedure of applying fix packs as given in support docs before applying one.

IBM Cognos & FPM Webinars (web seminars)

New to BI? Confused with so many implementation questions with BI? Want to know more about BI?

Here's your chance. IBM has prepared various webinars targeted to BI users across the globe to help them in evaluating power of BI and different implementation scenarios and what all you could benefit from BI.

From case studies to Cognos's new features, from report authors's perspective to CXO's dashboards. 

Here's the link to list of webinars (web seminars) on IBM Cognos BI & FPM to help you out with.

Get all the magic here

Note: It's targeted for IBM customers and business partners, so it would require you to fill up a form first.

IBM Cognos Mobile app for iPad available in iTunes

With the launch of IBM Cognos BI 10.1.1, there's now an iPad app available in iTunes.

The new app enables customers to take advantage of the capabilities of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence for the Mobile Workforce and Cognos Active Report.

From IBM US announcement letter of IBM Cognos BI 10.1.1

"Mobile application for the Apple iPad
          Interactive native iPad application that enables mobile consumption of active report and HTML Studio reports. Users can leverage and interact with existing business intelligence (BI) content while connected or disconnected."

Get the app here

IBM Cognos 10 Dynamic Query Analyzer User Guide

Proven Practive team is out with a user guide for initial release of Dynamic Query Analyzer. See the link to get all the fun of debugging and improving performance of IBM Cognos 10.1 DQM which along with improved performance provides ease of maintenance with query visualization.
 
Description
This document describes the various features available within IBM Cognos Dynamic Query Analyzer (DQA) that can be used for debugging and optimizing the performance of IBM Cognos Dynamic Query mode enabled IBM Cognos 10 reports.

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