Cognos (Unofficial): 2011

I still remember the days when i first installed and configured IBM Cognos BI 10.1.1 on Linux Box. Following are the points where i got stuck while going through. I would like to share with everyone here...

Planning your installation:

First of all you need to plan your installation and environment. Cognos installation can be single tier (all components on one machine) as well as it can be multi-tier (multiple servers with individual cognos components installed on them).
Once Cognos installation plan has been finalized, proceed to configuring your linux environment before starting installation.

Creating a separate user for cognos:

Create a user and group with name cognos.
create a directory /opt/ibm and assign full rights to cognos and group on this directory.
Java is required for cognos installer, service and configuration windows, therefore, you will need to install latest (but compatible) java on your linux machine.
Add JAVA_HOME variable to .bash_profile file of cognos user and also add java library paths to LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables. Java bin path should be added to PATH variable.

Configuring your Linux Environment:

If your linux machine is freshly installed, you might need to setup your desktop environment to either KDE, X-Window or GNOME. Following method is for gnome, since we will be remotely accessing our linux machine for installation.
ssh your linux box and startup the vncserver, it will require you to setup password if you are starting it first time. once vncserver is installed, stop it, as we will configure the remote vnc environment.
Once vncserver is stopped, do the following;
change directory to ~/.vnc and edit xstartup file in vi editor.
uncomment following lines.
1. #unset SESSION_MANAGE
2. #exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
Comment out this line.
--> twm &
adding this line is optional at the end of xstartup file.
--> exec gnome-session &
Apache httpd should be installed, configured and running. you will need to add your cognos website to its settings later on after cognos installation is finished.

Cognos Installation:

Open a terminal window and change directory to cognos setup directory.
Start the "issetup" (execute it ./issetup).
If your Java is installed correctly and JAVA environment variables are configured properly then setup will start.
Another reason why your setup might not start is that the dependency RPMs are not installed. Setup will fail to start giving you appropriate message. You will need to start those RPMs before starting cognos setup.
Assuming setup started successfully, we are proceeding now to next step.
Setup will ask you for very basis questions e.g. installation path & components to install.
We will install all components (gateway, content manager & application/dispatcher) on one linux box making it single tier architecture.
Select all components and install cognos. It will take some time to copy files to your server and doing basic startup configuration.
You will need to configure each cognos component before you are able to successfully.

Cognos Configuration:

First of all copy the folder /opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/configuration and make its backup to some place. if our configuration fails, we can replace it with our backup files, this will avoid reinstallation.
Open cognos configuration by running script <cognos install directory>/bin64/cogconfig.sh
Try exploring all options before you start configuring.
Click on Environment in configurations tree on left. Its relevant options will appear in right pane.
Replace "localhost" with the IP address (preferably static IP) or hostname (if it has dns entry in active directly of your domain). Put it in all places where you can see localhost in URLs. (Gateway URI, Dispatcher URIs for gateway, Controller URI for gateway, External & Internal Dispatcher, Dispatcher URI for external applications, Content Manager URIs).
Next important setting is configuring memory for cognos service. Navigate to "IBM Cognos" in IBM Cognos Services and change its "Maximum memory in MB" according to your allowed and available memory limit.
Next is most important setting related to third component of cognos i.e. Cognos Content Manager. Navigate to Data Access in tree and open Content Manager.
We will be using Oracle database as content store database. This database is where cognos stores all its contents. It should be backed up on regular basis to avoid data loss in future.
To configure oracle database as content store database, we will require few configurations in file system.
ojdbc5.jar file should be copied from Oracle client library folder (<oracle 32 bit client install path>/client_1/jdbc/lib/ojdbc5.jar) to ibm cognos web apps library folder (<cognos install path>/webapps/p2pd/WEB-INF/lib/ojdbc5.jar)
After this we can configure our content manager and content store database.
Fill in appropriate values in Resource properties for Content Manager along with service name.
Try to test by right clicking in tree view. On failure you will be given failure reason which you can resolved easily. Service name can be added by netca (network configuration assistant) in oracle settings.
Save your configuration. If all goes well, you will observe all green tick marks.
Now we will proceed towards gateway and apache httpd configuration.
Open /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf in any editor.
Perform changes as follows.

Options FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride None

Order deny, allow
Deny from all
</Directory>

add a script alias as below;

ScriptAlias /ibmcognos/cgi-bin "/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin"

Options FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride FileInfo

Order Allow, Deny

Allow from All

</Directory>

Now Add an Alias

Alias /ibmcognos/cgi-bin "/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/webcontent"

Options FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride FileInfo

Order Allow, Deny

Allow from All

</Directory>

Find keyword "Listen" and change it to YOUR_SERVER_IP:80
Find keyword ServerName and change it to YOUR_HOST_NAME:80
Save httpd.conf file & restart httpd service. You might observe any httpd startup error if there is some mistake. try to fix it, may be some syntax error.
Oracle jdbc connect is used by content manager to connect to oracle content store database. therefore, if content store database is 32 bit then client must be 32 bit, so, ojdbc14.jar file can be obtained from oracle client home directories and should be pasted to <cognos install path>/webapps/p2pd/WEB-INF/lib folder.
if content store database is 64 bit then ojdbc5.jar or ojdbc6.jar should be used if oracle is 10g or 11g respectively.
Configure & Test LDAP Authentication Provider but this should be done later on when cognos has started successfully for the first time.
Mail notifications can be set in Notification in tree view in configuration window. Server IP should be allowed on SMTP mail server.

Database Connectivity for the Reporting Database.

Up till cognos 10.1.1, only 32 bit oracle clients were supported for reporting databases. It might change in future. 64 bit clients cannot connect to reporting databases as far as cognos is concerned. You will always get failure when testing cognos data source connection.
For this we will do following changes.
libnnz10 or 11.so and libclntsh.so.1x.x should be copied from $ORACLE_HOME/lib to $Cognos_Home/bin directory. (Reference article : https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21367256).

Miscellaneous settings:

For restricting users and allow only wanted users to access cognos web, follow this link (http://businessintelligence.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/cognos-admin-l/cognos-login-restrict-access-4152625#M4543352)

For any help please contact me at khalidmehmoodawan@gmail.com

Please do leave comments below if above article really helped you.

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Cognos (Unofficial)

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Installation & Configuration of Cognos 10.1.1 on Red Hat Linux with Oracle as Database.