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Showing posts from June, 2012

GMAIL-Your Free SMTP server for Cognos

Considering your are configuring a cognos on your laptop and need to have a SMTP server.The easiest way to do it is use a gmail account below are the steps for that. To enable that feature you need to have email account, and also have access to SMTP server (outgoing message server). You may download any smtp server, but the easiest solution is to open an account at gmail.com (or any other free email site, witch allow you to use smtp server for free). Open gmail account, and go to the Cognos configuration => Data Access => Notification. Change “SMTP mail server” to smtp.gmail.com:587. In “account and password” field provide your account name like your_account_name@gmail.com and your gmail password. In “Default sender” match email where you want to receive notification, for example your new gmail. Save changes and restart server.

Alternate Drill Downs and Time dimension

Problem(Abstract) When creating alternate drill-down paths within a time dimension, the drill down paths must be defined so that Transformer can connect them appropriately at the convergence level. In particular, the categories that descend from of the convergence level must be identical. If constructing a time dimension that contains multiple drill-down paths and attempting to connect it at a level for which descendant time periods do not exactly coincide, Transformer will be unable to connect the paths correctly. Resolving the problem Several factors affect the way in which Transformer creates categories in date levels, and therefore potentially limit the ability to connect alternate drill-down paths in a time dimension. The factors are: 1. Whether the drill-down structures differ in type (Calendar or Lunar), 2. How the Year Begins property is set for each drill-down structure, 3. How the properties that affect weeks are defined in each drill-down structure, suc

How to remove the -1 from Excel Multisheet Ouput Tabs

Problem(Abstract) A Cognos 8 multi-page report output to Excel 2002 will have the worksheet tabs named as <Page1 Name>-1, <Page1 Name>-2,<Page2 Name>-3, <Page2 Name>-4, etc How can the suffix be removed the first page name in each set? Eg: <Page1 Name>, <Page1 Name>-2,<Page2 Name>, <Page2 Name>-2 Environment Excel 2002 Resolving the problem As of Cognos 8.3, there is a new Advanced Property setting to override this behaviour: RSVP.EXCEL.NUMBEREDSHEETNAMES=FALSE Steps: 1) From Cognos Connection, click Launch 2) Cognos Administration. 3) Click the Configuration tab. 4) Select Dispatchers and Services. 5) Click on the Dispacher name. 6) Beside BatchReportService click the 'Set Properties' icon. 7) Click on the Settings tab. 8) Beside Environment Advanced settings, Click Edit. 9) Click the checkbox beside 'Override the settings acquired from the parent entry'

Users are unable to generate Delimited text (CSV) files for large report (500+ MG in size for CSV format).

Error : RSV-BBP-0021 when users save big report in CSV format Users are unable to generate Delimited text (CSV) files for large report (500+ MG in size for CSV format). Receive the following error: Failure RSV-BBP-0021 The operation 'getOutput' is not allowed at this time. Symptom Cognos system administrator is able to successfully run and create the report outputs in CSV format. Users can run small reports in CSV formats successfully. Running the large report in HTML format is fine. Running report in PDF format generates different error: .RSV-SRV-0040 Cause This problem is caused by the size of data Environment Windows Resolving the problem Set a big value to CM parameter CM.MULTIPARTREQUESTMAXLENGTH - Go to Cognos Administration - Click System, expand the services

What are QRD´s and how does optimizing them result in better querying on large reports?

Query Result Definitions (QRDs) are used in a report to request the data as it should be laid out. This means for every element on the report page (list, crosstab, chart) the layout components creates a QRD and hand this over to the query engine. The QRD describes in which format the data is expected from the query engine so to fit to the user requested layout. So it could be that a lot of QRDs are executed and takes resources. The optimization will collect all QRDs and analyse if some parts of QRDs can be reused or equal to reduce work for the query engine and the database. Especially on large reports it is a good opportunity to reuse and pool QRDs. Also, there is no benefit on small and simple reports unless the different elements uses the same query. Its not database specific, It´s used for an internal optimization before sending the queries to the database. Note: In IBM Cognos 10.1 and later releases QRD optimization is enabled by default and this advanced property