Title of the Webzine Article

Troubleshooting Cognos resource load in Metadata Manager 8.6.1

© 2009 Informatica Corporation Overview Cognos is a Business Intelligence (BI) tool which allows reporting and analysis of data stored in a relational database, multidimensional database, or flat data file. Metadata Manager can extract Metadata from Cognos and it supports Cognos 1.1, 8.0-8.3

Pre-requisites for creating a Cognos resource To load Cognos resource you would need to have the following setup:

 Install Cognos server on UNIX or Windows.  Install Metadata Manager Agent on a Windows box since it cannot run in UNIX. For extracting Cognos metadata, Metadata Manager Agent need not run on the machine where the Cognos client is installed; it can be installed in any windows machine.  A Cognos user with Administrator privileges has to be created to use with Metadata Manager – Administrator privileges are needed so that all metadata can be fetched from Cognos.

Configuring a Cognos Resource in MM 8.6.1 In the configuration screen of Metadata Manager for Cognos Resource, you would need to provide the Following Information:

Agent URL: The URL of the Metadata Manager Agent running on the Windows system.

Source System Version: Metadata Manager supports Cognos ReportNet Content Manager alone

Version: The version of the Cognos server from which you are extracting the metadata. Metadata Manager 8.6.1 support 1.x, and upto 8.3

Cognos resource configuration in Metadata Manager:

2 3 Login Server URL: Provide the Dispatcher URL which is of the format: http://:/p2pd/servlet/dipatch

Login Namespace/User/Password: Provide these details as it’s given while logging into the Cognos Server. If you are using Siteminder or SSO system, provide the Cognos user-id/password and the Namespace and not the Siteminder/SSO user-id.

Repository Subset: This is a new parameter introduced from Metadata Manager 8.6.1 HotFix1. If you are planning to load a minimal subset of Cognos packages into Metadata Manager, then, you can make use of this parameter and provide the path to those resources directly, instead of retrieving the models in the next step. The repository subset string is a semicolon-separated list of individual Cognos paths used to retrieve Model(s) or Report(s) from the Cognos Server. See the Cognos Documentation for full search path syntax. Note that all path items in the list have all ';' and '\' characters replaced with '\;' and '\\' respectively to make sure that these special characters will not interfere with list parsing.

Following formats are valid but MM doesn’t yet support all. See the ‘Known Limitations’ section for the recognized formats

/content/package[@name='GO Sales and Retailers']/model

"/content/package[@name='GO Sales and Retailers']/folder[@name='Documentation Report Samples']/report[@name='Create a Prompt']".

"/content/package[@name='GO Sales and Retailers']//report" all reports in package

Cognos SDK Library Path: This parameter wasn’t exposed to the UI in pre-8.6.1 releases. By default Metadata Manager Agent uses open Web Services based API to communicate with the Cognos server. However some functionality, such as connection redirect, is only available when using the native Cognos SDK libraries. The native Cognos SDK libraries are part of the SDK package. Ask the Cognos administrator to install the SDK package on the server and provide you with a local copy of the following directory:

For Cognos 8 BI: 'C:\Program Files\cognos\c8\sdk\java\lib' For Cognos ReportNet: 'C:\Program Files\cognos\crn\sdk\java\lib'

These directories must contain at least the following files: - axis.jar - axisReportNetClient.jar - commons-discovery.jar - commons-logging.jar - jaxrpc.jar - saaj.jar - wsdl4j.jar - xercesImpl.jar - xml-apis.jar

4 Troubleshooting Cognos resource load failures 1. ImasAcquisitionException when selecting retrieve/refresh models

The reason for this exception can be because of incorrect parameters which have been specified in Step 3.

1. MM Agent URL might be pointing to a wrong location 2. MM Agent not running in the host given in the Agent URL a. To test if the MM Agent is running, copy the link http::/MIMBWebServices in a internet browser and see if the MM Agent is running. By default port no is 19983. 3. The Cognos Login Server URL might be wrong. Please check. a. If it’s Cognos 8, the login server URL is http://localhost:9300/p2pd/servlet/dispatch b. If it’s Cognos ReportNet : http://localhost/crn/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi 4. Login Namespace would have been configured incorrectly.

To test if your authentication parameters works use the Web client based tool from Cognos (Version 8) which allows one to verify the connection and authentication availability. Sample URL is: http://localhost:8080/c8/cm_tester.htm

5 Make sure that you use the same credentials (Login Namespace, login user and password) that you use in Metadata Manager. You need to test this from the same machine where you have the MM console installed.

Also, another thing to keep in mind is, if COGNOS is not configured to use LDAP or any other Authentication (say, signOn) then you can leave the Namespace field blank while connecting from MM console.

To validate your log-in parameters 1. Access the URL, Log-On using the credentials which you gave in Metadata Manager.

6 Status Check

The above steps would corroborate that the User credentials are valid. Even after checking the credentials, the imasAcquisitionException exists, then it would mean MITI Agent is not able to communicate with Cognos Server, in which case, Cognos SDK could be used.

2. Java.lang.NullPointerException during retrieve/refresh models.

This is a known issue with 8.6.1 pre-HotFix4 releases. Please apply Hotfix4 to combat this issue. If you are facing this even after applying HotFix4, it could be due to very large request, when the Cognos server fails to handle. The workaround is to run consecutive imports of only a subset of the metadata each time until all objects have been imported which can be achieved using the Repository Subset parameter.

7 3. Java.net.SocketTimeoutExcpetion during retrieve/refresh models or during load.

This would mean Metadata Manager Agent couldn’t communicate with the Cognos Server in a stipulated time. It could be an issue with the network connecting the Metadata Manager Agent and the Cognos Server – a network sniffer can be used to see if there are any connection refusals from the Cognos server.

4. Unexpected application error in runImport during the load

This is a known issue in pre-8.6.1 Hotfix4 releases. Apply Hotfix4 for resolving this.

How to simulate a Cognos resource load issue?

For simulating the issue, the Cognos Model export is required. Please follow the below steps for importing the Cognos model:

1) Connect to the IBM Cognos Connection using Web browser. 2) Click 'Launch'->'IBM Cognos Administration'. 3) Click 'Configuration'. 4) Click 'Content Administration'. 5) Click on the 'New Export' icon. 6) Follow Cognos export wizard to export the metadata. 7) The export ZIP file is usually located on the server in 'C: \Program Files\cognos\c8\deployment' 8) Send the produced file to the support team.

Please contact Informatica Product Support with the model export

Known Limitations

1. Some of the Repository subset parameters, such as: /content/package[@name='GO Sales and Retailers']/folder[@name='Documentation Report Samples']/report[@name='Create a Prompt']" and /content/package[@name='GO Sales and Retailers']//report are not parsed by Metadata Manager and it throws the following error:

8 Currently, Metadata Manager supports the format: /content/package[@name='GO Sales and Retailers']// * and /content/folder[@name=’folder’]/package[@name=’pkg’]//* but in the latter case, the display of the package name in the 'Available models' list is wrong - CR# 206288 reports this issue; the load goes fine, though For supporting other valid formats, CR# 206289 has been raised.

2. If the packages in Cognos server are inside a folder, then, MM doesn’t extract these packages and you will see blank spaces in the ‘Available models’ tab as shown below. CR# 201726 exists for this issue.