1.

What is the reason for creating a database Signon in Cognos 8

To avoid a situation when multiple users access the database engine and need to enter database credentials every time they need to run a report. When a database signon is created, users and groups that can access the signon can be specified.

2. How to move an entire Cognos 8 installation from one environment to another

Use Cognos Connection to move the Content Store database from one database engine to another. An administrator can export entries and objects from IBM Cognos 8 to a Deployment archive file. It can be imported on any other cognos 8 installation. It is also possible to move content store using native database backup and recovery engines or an ETL process. The following databases can be used as a Cognos Cognos Store: Cognos Content Database, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2 and Sybase.

3. How to upgrade Reportnet report specifications and perform consistency check in Cognos Connection?
Use the Report Upgrade Task in cognos connection. Go to the IBM Content Administration, then go to Configuration and use the 'New Content Maintenance' button on the toolbar. A pop-up window will appear with two options: New Consistency Check and New Report Upgrade

4. In Cognos Connection, what are the portlets used for Content handling ?
Content handling portlets in Cognos Connection: Cognos Navigator - Browse folders, show the folder hierarchy Cognos Connection, reports, and other entries Cognos Search - Search for IBM Cognos reports and other entries Cognos Viewer - View and interact with IBM Cognos reports and other entries

5. What might be a reason for copying a user profile?

An administrator may want to copy a user profile in the following situations: A user changes names and an account is set up in the new name. A user moves to another namespace or when namespaces change.

Page 1 of 5

6. What is a shortcut and what happens when the target is renamed?

Shortcut is a pointer to another entry such as a report, report view, folder, job, agent, page, or URL. If the source entry was deleted or moved to another location, the shortcut icon changes to indicate a broken link. In this case, the shortcut doesn't work anymore as it refers to the target object's original name.

7. What are the IBM Cognos 8 user permissions

IBM Cognos 8 user permissions

Read - it allows users to: - View all the properties of an entry, including the report specification, report output and properties. - Create a shortcut to the objects. Write - it allows users to: - Create entries in a container (packages and folders for instance) - Modify properties of an entry - Delete an entry - Modify the specification of a report - Create new outputs for a report Execute - it allows users to: - Process and run an entry, such as reports, agents and metrics. - For data sources, connections and signons, the entries can be used to retrieve data from a data provider, however the user cannot read the database information directly. - Permit someone else to use their credentials. Set policy - allows users to read and update security settings, view and change permissions of a Cognos 8 object Traverse - allows users to view the contents of a folder or a package, and view general properties of the container (such as name, description, creation date, and so on)

8. Mail server configuration

The mail server for Cognos is configured in IBM Cognos Configuration. To provide Cognos 8 content access to the mail server and ability to send notifications, go to Data Access -> Notification. In order to send mail notifications from Cognos, it is required to define the SMTP mail server, provide account name and password and choose a default sender.

9. How to set up email report distribution in Cognos?

IBM Cognos 8 allows to schedule the distribution of the reports so that users receive the reports on a given time basis. Recipients must have read permissions for the report and traverse permissions for the folder where the report is located. When the report is attached to an email, it is no longer secured by the IBM Cognos security Page 2 of 5

system. The email recipients are selected from a list which contains users, groups, roles and defined distribution lists. If an administrator wants to email a report to a recipient which is not part of the Cognos security system, a new Contact needs to be created in Cognos Administration.

10. How to set up email report distribution in Cognos?

IBM Cognos 8 allows to schedule the distribution of the reports so that users receive the reports on a given time basis. Recipients must have read permissions for the report and traverse permissions for the folder where the report is located. When the report is attached to an email, it is no longer secured by the IBM Cognos security system. The email recipients are selected from a list which contains users, groups, roles and defined distribution lists. If an administrator wants to email a report to a recipient which is not part of the Cognos security system, a new Contact needs to be created in Cognos Administration.

11. What might be a reason for creating a report view by an administrator

A report view uses the same report specification as the source report but has different properties and allows to apply different report settings without modifying the report itself. The properties that can be adjusted are: run options, prompt values, schedules, delivery methods, internalization options and output formats. Creating a report view does not change the original report.

12. What is the scope of a package based drill through?

When a packaged based drill through is set up, a report is available to any report based on the source package. When setting up a drill through, first specify the scope to use in the package and then, a report to use as the drill through target. The scope of the package based drill through represents the target report in the drill definition that is shown to the user, based on the items they have in the source report. The package-based drill through is set up in Cognos Connection.

13. How do the components in IBM Cognos 8 architecture communicate?

The IBM Cognos 8 architecture uses the following technologies: Page 3 of 5

Extensible Markup Language (XML) Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Web Services Definition Language (WSDL)

This ensures that the platform is highly scalable, available and open. The communication between IBM Cognos 8 components is SOAP on HTTP protocol.

14. What are the architecture tiers in IBM Cognos 8?

IBM Cognos 8 architecture is compound of three tiers: Tier 1: Webserver - contains IBM Cognos 8 gateways Tier 2: Applications - represented by IBM Cognos 8 server applications with Dispatcher and Content Manager Tier 3: Data - Content store, query databases and metric stores connected via API or JDBC

15. IBM Cognos 8 services overview

IBM Cognos 8 installs one dispatcher on each computer by default. Each dispatcher has a set of associated services, listed below: Agent service - runs agents Batch report service - manages background requests to run reports and provides output Content Manager service - performs object manipulation functions in the content store Data movement service - manages the execution of data movement tasks (ETL), such as Builds and JobStreams, created in Data Manager Designer Delivery service - sends emails to an external SMTP server on behalf of other services Event management service - creates, schedules, and manages event objects that represent reports, jobs, agents, content store maintenance, deployment imports and exports, and metrics Job service - runs jobs by signaling the monitor service to run job steps in the background Log service - captures log messages generated by the dispatcher and other services Metric Studio service - provides the Metric Studio user interface for monitoring and entering performance information Migration service - manages the migration from Cognos Series 7 to IBM Cognos 8 Monitor service - manages the monitoring and execution of tasks that are scheduled, submitted for execution at a later time or run in background. It also creates history objects and manages failover and recovery. Planning job service - manages communications with the Planning Job Server subsystem. Planning web service - manages communications with Contributor Web and Contributor Add-in for Excel users. Planning administration console service - manages communication with the Contributor Administration Console Planning data service - manages communications for real-time reporting from Contributor plan data in IBM Cognos 8. Presentation service - transforms generic XML responses from another service into output format, such as HTML or PDF. Presentation service processes the request when a user launches saved output in Cognos Connection and views it in Cognos Viewer. Page 4 of 5

 Report data service - manages the transfer of report data between IBM Cognos 8 and applications that consume the data, such as IBM Cognos 8 Go! Office and IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile. Report service - manages interactive requests to run reports and provides output for Cognos Connection. The service (is responsible for generating HTML pages) System service - defines the Business Intelligence Bus API compliant service used to obtain application wide IBM Cognos 8 configuration parameters. In Cognos Administration, the services listed are only services that are enabled in Cognos Configuration.

16. What are the supported application servers by Cognos 8

By default, IBM Cognos 8 installs and uses Tomcat as the default application server, however other servers are also supported: BEA WebLogic Server IBM WebSphere Application Server Oracle Application Server Red Hat JBoss SAP NetWeaver Sun Java Systems Application Server (for Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems only) The application server (Tomcat for instance) acts as a servlet container for Cognos 8 presentation services.

17. What is the definition of the Application tier

IBM Cognos 8 BI Application tier (2. tier) contains the Content Manager servlet and dispatcher servlet. The applications tier runs requests (reports, analyses and queries for instance), that are forwarded by a gateway. The Application Layer also renders the IBM Cognos Connection and Metric Studio interfaces.

18. How to ensure failover when configuring Content Manager?

A Cognos 8 BI installation may include one or more Content Managers, each on a different computer. One Content Manager computer is active and one or more Content Manager computers are on standby. The standby Content Manager computers are for failover in case of a software or hardware failure. For failover, it is important to ensure that the authentication providers need the be set up in the same way an all machines hosting Content Managers. When the default active Content Manager fails, the system automatically switches to a Standby Content Manager and requests are directed to it.

19. Cognos Application Firewall configuration to access a report on a remote computer

Page 5 of 5

IBM Cognos Application Firewall (CAF) analyzes and validates HTTP and XML requests before they are processed by servers. Requests rejected by the firewall are stored in a logfile (cogserver.log by default). All computers where IBM Cognos 8 Application Tier Components are installed must have the same firewall settings. To change CAF settings start IBM Cognos Configuration, in the Explorer window, go to Security and click IBM Cognos Application Firewall. Then go to the Properties window and set the appropriate values for Enable CAF validation. In order to access a report on a remote computer, the name of the remote computer must be added to the list of a valid domains or hosts.

20. What are gateways in the Cognos Webserver tier?

The IBM Cognos 8 Web server tier (tier 1.) contains one or more gateways. Web communication in IBM Cognos 8 is typically through gateways, which reside on one or more Web servers. A gateway is an extension of a Web server program that transfers information from the Web server to another server. For failover, the gateway can be configured to know the location of multiple dispatchers. Upon receiving a request, the IBM Cognos 8 gateway does the following: encrypts passwords to ensure security extracts information needed to submit the request to an IBM Cognos 8 server attaches environment variables for the Web server adds a default namespace to the request to ensure that the server authenticates the user in the correct namespace passes requests to an IBM Cognos 8 dispatcher for processing

21. How to disable anonymous access in Cognos 8

By default, an anonymous access to the Cognos Connection portal is allowed and there is no user authentication. The anonymous access can be disabled on the machine where content manager is installed (including the failover content manager). Go to Cognos configuration -> Security -> Authentication -> Cognos, click on 'Allow anonymous access?' and select 'No'. To ensure that only select users have unrestricted access to Public Folders in Cognos Connection, the Everyone group must be removed from the System Administrators role. IBM Cognos 8 components support the following authentication sources: Active Directory Server IBM Cognos Series 7 Custom Authentication Provider LDAP eTrust SiteMinder NTLM SAP

Page 6 of 5

22. Why content manager services must be started first in the distributed installation?
An administrator must configure and start services for the content manager first to ensure that the certificate authority service is available to issue certificates to other computers in the distributed installation. The gateway must be configured to know the location of the content manager.

23. How does load balancing work in Cognos 8?

Load balancing spreads processing among all available processors which means that processing requests are distributed appropriately among all the available Cognos servers. By default, Cognos balances request load automatically, so each server dispatcher processes the same number of requests. The automatic load balancing is weighted round robin. Load balancing can be also customized by setting process capacity settings using server administration options. The CPU speed is a good indicator to set the balancing weight. For instance, when there are 2 servers with following configuration: a dual P4 3,8GHz with 2048MB RAM server a single CPU 1Ghz with 1024MB RAM machine Then it would be reasonable to assing a weight of 4 to the first server and a weight of 1 to the second one. Then Cognos will submit most of the request (80%) to the more powerful server. In order to disable the Cognos 8 internal load balancing mechanism, the mode needs to be set to Cluster compatible.

24. Audit logging and audit reports in Cognos 8

Audit logging (audit reports) are used to view the information in a logging database about user and report activity. Sample audit report definitions might be: User calls made from Cognos 8 components Agent execution history by user Daily average and poor exceptions Daily metric exceptions Execution history reports by package, report, user Failed service requests detect agent Logon operations by time stamp, username, User sessions - abnormal termination, logon errors, etc. A few sample audit reports are available in the Cognos samples installation package

Page 7 of 5

25. What logging levels are available in IBM Cognos 8?

The logging levels are set to specify the events and messages to record in the log file or in the log database. A different logging level can be set for each dispatcher service. In Cognos 8 there are 5 different logging levels: Minimal, Basic, Request, Trace, Full. Attached below is a list of logging events by a level: System and service startup and shutdown, runtime errors - logged on all 5 levels User account management, runtime usage of IBM Cognos 8, use requests - Basic, Request, Trace, Full (all except Minimal) Service requests and responses - Request, Full All requests to all components with parameter values, native queries - Trace, Full

26. What are Cognos 8 system metrics types?

There is a wide variety of metrics available in IBM Cognos 8 installation to help monitor the system performance. The cognos system metrics include the following groups: Session metrics - containing such metrics as number of sessions Queue metrics - Latency, Number of queue requests, Queue length, Time in queue JVM metrics - monitor Java heap size (memory currently used) and up time Request metrics - monitor volume of requests, operational status of services, response and processing times Process Metrics for Report and Batch Report Service - Number of processes Most of the metrics include the following set of values: - current value (a point in time) - high watermark value (a maximum value since the last reset) - low watermark value (a minimum value since the last reset)

27. Supported data sources in IBM Cognos 8

Data sources are created in Cognos Connection and are necessary to create models in Framework Manager and run reports or analyses from IBM Cognos 8. IBM Cognos 8 supports the following data sources: DB2 IBM Cognos PowerCubes - need specifying a local path IBM DB2 OLAP and Hyperion Essbase IBM Infosphere Warehouse Cubing Services Informix Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Analysis Services - the Cognos service needs to have credentials to access MSAS server ODBC

Page 8 of 5

Oracle SAP BW InfoCubes TM1 XML

28. Concurrent report query execution

By default, IBM Cognos 8 executes queries in a report sequentially. Depending on the server environment it might be possible to improve report run performance by enabling parallel query execution. This setting can be adjusted in the advanced server properties for the report service and the batch report service. When concurrent query execution is enabled, the report server determines which queries in the report can be run in parallel. There are a few parameters that can be adjusted to manage concurrency in Cognos 8: RSVP.CONCURRENTQUERY.NUMHELPERSPERPROCESS - number of helpers per report service (and batch report service) process. By default the parameter value is 0 (concurrency disabled). RSVP.CONCURRENTQUERY.MAXNUMHELPERSPERREPORT - maximum number of helpers per report. By default it is set to 1. Has no effect when the above parameter is set to 0. RSVP.CONCURRENTQUERY.ENABLEDFORINTERACTIVEOUTPUT - enables concurrent query execution when the report service is producing interactive output (disabled by default).

29. Integration with an existing web portal

The open IBM Cognos 8 architecture means that it is possible to integrate IBM Cognos 8 into the organization''s existing Web portal. IBM Cognos 8 provides Portal Services to integrate cognos with a number of portals, including: SAP Enterprise IBM WebSphere Plumtree

30. Definition and role of a cognos 8 dispatcher

A Dispatcher starts all IBM Cognos 8 services configured and enabled on a computer and routes requests. The dispatcher is a multithreaded application that uses one or more threads per request. Dispatcher can route requests to such services as: report service, presentation service, job service, monitor service. A dispatcher can also route requests to a specific dispatcher to run a given request. Requests can be routed to specific dispatchers based on load-balancing needs or package requirements. During the process of IBM Cognos 8 gateways configuration, a list of universal resource identifiers (URIs) of target dispatchers is available (oredered from the most to least preferred). When a dispatcher starts, it registers itself with Content Manager, so each dispatcher is aware of other dispatchers. If a dispatcher fails, requests are routed to another dispatcher based on the list.

Page 9 of 5

In general, roles represent a collection of users that are responsible for similiar areas, have the same status or perform the same tasks in an organization. Cognos 8 allows administrators to implement custom business specific roles, however a default set of ten predefined roles will normally be enough. The IBM Cognos 8 BI predefined roles are:

Consumers - run and read reports Query users - run and read reports and use Query Studio Authors - run and read reports and use Query Studio and Report Studio Report Administrators - administer reports, use Query Studio and Report Studio Server Administrators - administer servers, jobs and dispatchers Directory Administrators - administer accounts, groups, contacts, distribution lists, data sources and printers Metrics Administrators - administer metrics packages and tasks in cognos connection Metrics authors - Create and edit scorecard applications in Metrics Studio Metrics users - monitor enterprise performance in Metrics Studio Portal administrators - Administer cognos portlets and third-party portlets in Cognos Connection

31. How to schedule reports in Cognos 8?

Schedules are coordinated in Cognos 8 using the Schedule Management tool. The schedule management tool can be accessed directly from Cognos Connection and it allows to add, modify or delete a schedule, view report run history and change the properties of a job. Reports can be scheduled in Cognos 8 to run:

individually or by using a job on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly and by minute basis at a given time in the future or at a recurring date and time

Each report or job can be associated with only one schedule. If multiple schedules are required for the same report, multiple report views need to be created and scheduled for each report. To Schedule multiple reports, it is necessary to create a job. A Cognos job composed of steps, each of which is a reference to an individual report, a report view or another job. The steps in a job can be executed in a sequence or in parallel.

Page 10 of 5