Tips for Installing Cognos Analytics 11.1.1

Welcome to this latest installment of the Senturus is Knowledge Series. Today we’re pleased to be presenting tips for installing Cognos Analytics: 11.1.1. We’ll talk about the new version, New Steps and new installation tool.

0:27
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0:48
We do attempt to answer all the questions live during the webinar, to the extent we’re able to, in that time, allows. Any questions we are unable to answer. We will complete the questions log that we save after the webinar and we’ll post it along with the content on senturus.com, which always brings us to the next question that invariably pops up. Can I get the presentation slide deck? And the answer is an unqualified. Yes. You head over to senturus.com/resources, the deck is already up there.

1:19
We will post it any recording of this webinar, along with the aforementioned questions log completed questions log. Within a few weeks of this of the airing of this webinar, so you can find that up there at senturus.com/resources along with a lot of other great stuff.

1:36
Our agenda today, we’ll do some quick introductions, then we’re going to talk about the new installer.

1:41
We’ll discuss some hardware specs, talk about the web servers, database drivers, and preservation files.

1:49
Well, and then, we’ll give you a little about Senturus, for those of you who may not be familiar with our organization, but we encourage you to stick around, because we’ve got some great upcoming events, additional resources, and, of course, the always interesting Q&A that will use the rest of the time for.

2:05
So, our presenter today. I’m pleased to be joined by Todd Shuman, who leads our installation upgrade and optimization practice here at Senturus. Todd has over 17 years of business analytics experience across multiple different industries. He works closely with the IBM Product Development team and has been in the forefront of the Cognos Analytics Upgrade and installation process since it debuted. He lives with his wife and daughters outside of Washington, DC, in the lovely State of Virginia.

2:35
So, we always like to get a bit of a finger on the pulse of the attendees today. So, I’m going to put a poll out here and launch that. So, what version of Cognos we’d like to find out that you’re currently running or you’re running?

2:51
The current version of C 11 earlier? A version of 10, 8 or other, so, if you could please vote on that. We will share the results in a little bit here. We got about two thirds of you guys, three quarters voted already.

3:05
I’ll give this just a couple more seconds and why you guys are on it today.

3:11
Got to, like, 90% here, so I’ll close that, and share it.

3:16
So, you can see here that about close to half or run, 11 lot of you are already up on an 11.1. Got a lot of Legacy 10 out there, though, fortunately. None of you are still on set. That’s great.

3:29
So, thank you for sharing your input and, I’m going to put up another poll here, so our second poll is, When you plan to upgrade to see 11, so this is obviously for you folks who are on older versions of Cognos. Is that in the next 1 to 2 months, 3 to 5 months, out, past six months, or you don’t have any plans or you’ve already upgraded?

3:58
Two thirds here, three fourths close to 980%.

4:05
Got a lively crowd today.

4:09
Alright, looks good.

4:11
Let’s show you the results here, so it looks pretty evenly split so much you guys are out there, between 3 and 5 months, even split between less than that, and more than that.

4:22
And a few of you, a lot of you have already upgraded, so interesting, thank you very much for that valuable insight.

4:29
I’m going to flip this back over here, and with that I’m going to give the microphone to our speaker. Todd. Todd floor is yours.

4:37
All right, thanks, Mike.

4:38
All right, let’s jump right in. Thanks for joining today. We’re going to kind of cover the 11.1.1 installation process.

4:46
If you’ve already done an 11.0, you are probably familiar with a lot of the steps, but it has changed, the installers different. So, just kind of going over that in, you know, things to be aware of, as you kind of go through the upgrade or new installation process. First thing you’ll see, you know, whether you’re in the new portal, or the install or other thing has got a new branding.

5:05
He had this new IBM Carlos Analytics logo, which has changed since the one that you had in 11, leave it at zero.

5:14
And the installer, now, it’s a bit confusing. It took me a little bit to figure out what was going on when I was trying to grab the executable, as in the past.

5:22
Usually grab a zip file and you had to, you know, extract it a couple times and then run the installer, and each piece had its own installation executable with Cognos 11.1.

5:36
Um, there was feedback that the installation took such a long time to extract that file.

5:43
Sometimes you had to wait, you know, five minutes or more, depending on how fast your server was, just too even get to the first screen of the installation.

5:50
So to fix that, they created this new CA installer. There’s, the one for Windows is shown here, but there’s similar ones for Linux if you’re running Linux and then it requires you to then once you get to the first or second screen, to pick what you want to install.

6:05
And that’s what you’re kind of browse to a zip file.

6:08
There’s two to kind of basically get started. There’s the CA server.

6:13
Again, you’ll have different Extensions, you know, for Windows, Linux, different versions of Linux, is also a CA client, MP, which contains all the client tools.

6:23
So depending on which one you select at this screen here, you’ll see a bunch of different options when you kind of go through the installer.

6:29
So, for example, if you need to install Fabric Manager, Kobe designer, query analyzer, or life cycle manager, want to pass it, the CA client MP file.

6:41
Whereas if you want just the server, um, you’ll do the CA server.

6:45
For some reason. They decided to include life cycle manager in both of those.

6:48
So if that’s the tool you’re after. You can’t really go wrong there.

6:51
It’s going to be there either way, but don’t try to, you know, expand those zip files. You know, we get a lot of questions. Hey, I download the new server, but I don’t see any way to install the setups that there. It doesn’t have an executable. So again, you have to use that CA installed or file first, and then browse to the file you want to install.

7:12
Again, if you can, if you’ve done the Cognos 11.0 install, these screens should be somewhat familiar to you, and let you pick between the analytics server, which is that, you know, that typical piece that you’re working with when you install the server. And it also includes the tools, which are now even more additional tools. In the past, there was just one tool, it was life cycle manager. Now, you have all the tools you discussed in the last page, fair Manager, Query Analyzer Acute Designer.

7:38
On a side note, transformer, and a couple of other things like cafe and those older tools that don’t really fit or aren’t in that list I mentioned earlier, they still have their own installation files. So nothing’s really changed for those. There’s a separate installer.

7:54
You just download it and it’s a one-off and you can just continue to do things the way you have in the past.

7:58
So, those ones weren’t included in the client tool that you see here.

8:04
But, back to the, the main, you know, server install. There’s two options, you know, there’s the easy install, which is more of just for like, a proof of concept. If you want to just quickly spin up an instance of Cognos and you don’t want to mess with creating content or databases, and setting up, you know, Active Directory or l-dap for user authentication?

8:24
Setting up IIS and all that stuff, it will kind of create all those things for you. A very small footprint.

8:30
Using some IBM software that includes lightweight versions of those.

8:35
So, you can just kind of quickly spin it up if you want to kick tires a bit on 11.1 and see, you know, how things look.

8:41
But, if you are going to put this into a production environment, you’re going to want to stick with the custom install, which will allow you to kind of use, you know, the industry specs for your content store.

8:53
Whether it’s SQL Server, Oracle DB two, and using your web server, you know, IIS Apache, et cetera.

8:59
So, depending on what you’re looking to do, you, most likely, you’re going to want to do the custom option, which, once you pick that, that’s where you get the standard, You know, OK. What? What are the components you want to install?

9:11
You know, and, and that’s always been, the terminology has changed a bit here, Content Tier is what we call Content Manager that’s still going to be, you know, the main keys, the brains of Cognos. The most important piece then you had your application tiers, which I always call it dispatchers. You know, if you’re going to scale out, you’re probably have several dispatchers, are going to load, balance your users, and then the gateway and Caicos, 11.0, this had to sort of in parentheses, the word optional.

9:38
It is true. You can run Cognos.

9:40
Without the gateway, you can access the Dispatches directly using ports and slash BI, but to kind of get, you know, some of the nicer features, like single sign on, and image browsing and other.

9:51
Nice to have is you’re going to want to use that gateway.

9:53
So, you can put all 3 on 1 server, or you can mix and match. There’s no real right or wrong way to do it, depending on what you’re trying to do.

10:01
But, those are the sort of the three main core components of Cognos.

10:07
I just kind of show you what things look like here so, you know, if I had kicked the BI server and then try to go to tools, this is where you’ll see, You know, life cycle manager is the only option that’s not grayed out.

10:18
If I selected the client zip file and click Tools, all four of these options on the right would be available. So here’s how you get to the Framework Manager Cube designer, Query Analyzer. So, again, depending on what option you pick, FirstNet Radio button, they kind of all kind of cascade through different options and if you’re looking for these tools, that’s where you’ll find them right here.

10:38
Let’s talk about some of the hardware specs.

10:41
So they have up to the specs.

10:43
From 11 0 to 11, not one, depending on what hardware you currently run, you may or may not need to bump things up if you’re going to move to 11 not 1, The biggest one being the ram.

10:56
We have some sandbox and dev environments at different clients of ours are running. And in the past, you may have gotten away with, you know, only eight gigs of ram on one of these servers.

11:08
Even though that was, you know, below IBM is recommended No specks, you could still get away with it and have, you know, but 1 or 2 gigs of ram available, ATSDR everything started up due to some of the changes and the new features in Cognos 11.1. That’s no longer the case, I, I really don’t think you can even get Cognos 11.1 running on anything. Less than eight gigs.

11:28
It’s going to chew up that during the startup time, and you may or may not even be able to start it. Let alone run anything. So, you’re going to want to have at least about 16 gigs of ram.

11:39
So, different, different areas here requires certain things. So, you always want to kind of have at least four gigs just for the OS itself.

11:45
Let things have, you know, some buffer window even if you first boot up without Cognos and you’re only using maybe 1 or 2, You want to have at least four available just for the OS to do its job.

11:55
The big ones that kind of change are the, the content manager and the JVM.

12:00
You want to have about eight gigs for those?

12:02
They bumped up the Query Service from 4 to 8.

12:05
The graphics service is now from 1 to 2 and interactive batch reports used to be about 1.5 gigabytes now the recommended two.

12:14
And so overall eon 16 gigabyte 16 gigabytes was sort of the minimum in the past for production. I recommend 32. And if you kind of have a weaker smaller dev environment that you can use to test things out, that was using eight, I would go to 16.

12:28
So, essentially, just double what you had today, unless you are already on the high side, and you should be fine to handle the 11.1 upgrade.

12:38
Another change, the default, for the West Sphere Liberty Profile.

12:43
This has changed over the wildlife first used to be Tomcat, then they switch it to Webster Liberty, I think, in 10.2.2, and, with Cognos 11.0, this sort of defaulted to 4000.

12:56
Just do against the increase in memory and things that Cognos needs to run these newer features and our defaults to 8192.

13:03
So, again, if you don’t have the ram, you want to bump this up, You may be even using more than this, depending on, you know what, you’re using, Dynamic Cubes being a big one.

13:13
But make sure you have this set correctly and make sure you have enough room for this to load.

13:20
The services cannot a whole bunch has changed. But if you’ve been to some of our other webinars where we demoed, you know, the new discovery features that kind of leverages some of the Watson Analytics capabilities. This is now a service that you can enable or disable, and it’s called the Interactive Discovery.

13:38
So if you aren’t going to use it, you can kind of free up some hardware and disable that.

13:43
But it is one of the, the newer, more attractive features in 11.1. Although it’s a bit immature, we’re expecting to see, you know, more and more. Research and development from IBM be put into this. This is sort of a hot area, so continue to, you know, as we wait for the next release and in further down the road this year, I expect to see more and more features and enhancements around this area. So, if you do turn it off, you, make sure you come back at some point, you know, especially with the new versions, and actually turn it back on.

14:16
Let’s talk about some web servers, database drivers, preservation, and files.

14:22
So, again, these things have gotten a little bit better over time, if you’ve been installing Cognos for a long time, You know, the IIS at some points was a painful experience, especially with the early versions of 11.

14:37
There was, I don’t know, the exact number, but I want to say 20 to 30 steps that you had to do at one points and lots of them involving, You know, very detailed as strings with you know .son, slashes, until does, and all kinds of things that were very easy to miss type. If you, if you didn’t get exactly right.

14:58
And getting that IIS to work correctly was a real pain, since then, I think it’s 11 0 and 4, or five somewhere around that time.

15:07
Someone who should probably win an award, invented this IIS scripts, which now is just a batch file that you have to modify, just a couple lines, pointing to the installation directory unless you want to change the default alias, which is IBM Cognos, which most clients, I feel use. There’s not really a whole bunch. You have to fill out, but it’s very basic. Well, documented.

15:28
You just plug it in and run this script, and it does all the hard work for you, so it makes it very, very easy.

15:34
The other piece is it’s outside of, you know, installing the standard IIS on the server.

15:39
There are additional features which aren’t included on the Windows Server, so you’ll have to go out and grab this ARR three plugin that’s going to add two essential features to your eyes, one being application request routing. We’re going to do some reverse proxies as part of how … works and the URL rewrites So again, these things you guys are kind of manually type in these different rewrite rules in the past all done for you out of the click of a button, and you’re up and running.

16:06
They do kind of have different versions now, so be careful which one you grab this one for 11.0.13, which is sort of the end of the end of the life cycle of 11. They’re going to support that for about two years now.

16:21
So if you’re sticking with that, you’ll make sure that you have that version.

16:24
If you are jumping to 11.1 point 1 as a separate CA IIS configure batch file for you. So when you go out there, I’ve provided the link on how to download this, to make sure you grab the right one and use that.

16:39
Database drivers. So, again, this is another great thing that they fixed in Cognos 11. In the past, you had to go to these obscure directories. And depending on what database you’re using, you had to put multiple files in different places.

16:52
At some point, someone just thought, hey, let’s make a folder called drivers. And you put the drivers in there. And they’re done so much easier wherever you install that. You’ll see the standard list of folders, where all the source files for cargo scope, we will have one called drivers.

17:05
Earlier versions of 11 kind of had, I believe, SQL JDBC driver in there.

17:10
But now, you have to kind of go and download either your Oracle DVT, or SQL server drivers, a JDBC drivers and put that version in there before you start cargoes configuration. That’s one thing that can drive you crazy.

17:24
When you first start up, your configuration is going to go and check that directory and pickup. Whatever’s drivers there? So, even if you forgot to put it in and you’re testing your database connections, too.

17:34
You know, your audit or your content store, you see, you know, failures.

17:38
You may have put it in, actually started it, you’re going to have to close down Cargoes configure, re-open it for it to pick up those changes. So, I’ve definitely, you know, pull my hair out, trying to figure out why it’s not connecting, and then only to realize that I had to restart it.

17:50
So just a little tip there, um, you don’t have to use JDBC connections, even though you’re using the JDBC driver in your data sources.

18:00
We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but to use the content store databases, Oracle SQL Server, or DB two, those are the only ones that are supported.

18:07
You’ll do need to have a JDBC driver, which is different than once or incongruous up and running. You’re gonna connect your data source connections, and those have various options, as well, so, that, you know, again, there’s those three that I mentioned.

18:19
I’ll have, you know, a native built-in client, and there’s also an option if you go into the data source connection, properties do also enable JDBC.

18:30
And it just requires, you know, almost repurposing some of the same parameters, you know, the database name, the server name, the Port’s, things like that.

18:38
And once you turn those on, that’s going to allow you to use some of the newer features in Cognos 11. So, if you want to use your data sources in dashboards or data modules, a lot of these newer features they require JDBC.

18:47
So, beyond just having the drivers’, you also want to have your data source connection is updated to JDBC.

18:54
Um, when you’re installing, especially in a clustered environment where you happy to multiple dispatchers, contact manage potentially, you do to make it do you do need to make sure that you have the database client and the JDBC drivers on them as well.

19:08
So, any app, location, tier, Dispatch server, or content repository, Content manager server. You need to make sure you have the drivers on there, because once the load balancing happens, it’s going to look for those drivers. If they’re not there, it’s going to fail.

19:24
That includes, you know, installing the SQL Native client or the Oracle client, if you’re using the older connections.

19:31
The CQL. So, again, good best practice to have, both. Just in case you are running some legacy in some older, you know, 32 bit versus 64 bit. But as long as you have everything on all the servers that are going to do any type of database work, you should be fine.

19:48
As far as the versions of the JDBC’s, you can kind of use different ones, and they’ve made this is confusing as absolutely possible.

20:01
There is actually now and OJ, DBC eight that you can use for Oracle 12.

20:06
I don’t have that listed here, that needs to get updated, but essentially you’re going to want to use, if you’re using Oracle 11 or 12, depending on the version you have, crabbing, you know, 6 or 7, or potentially eight and putting that into your driver’s directory.

20:21
These can get confusing, as well, so there’s two different versions of the OJJDP: CEA 6, 1 for 11,001 for 12.

20:31
It’s not easy to tell, based on the file name, obviously, which one it is. So, you can tell by the file size, it’s one way to tell the version for 11 is actually much bigger, it’s about 3.6 Meg, whereas the version for 12 is just over two. You got to tell by the time-stamp.

20:48
So it’s just a little bit more confusion.

20:51
But if you’re running the 7 or 8, you don’t have to worry about that. But there is a little bit of confusion on six, especially, if you’re still, haven’t moved everything off. Oracle 11, you’re running 11 and 12.

21:03
Need to make sure you have the right version of six. So it’s easy to get confused, but feel free to download the deck. And just keep this as a reference, if you’re still working with both those versions.

21:13
SQL Server, again, just as confusing. I don’t know where they come up with these numbers. What happened at five? No, one knows.

21:22
They went from 442 to 6 oh, 6 1, 6, 2, so all over the place. For the most part, I, I’d say 99% of the time, you’re going to want the 4.2 driver.

21:34
If you download these from Microsoft, there’s sort of a whole zip file of different versions. And, usage we need to match it to the J R E. Of Cognos, which should be January 8th.

21:44
So, you’ll see, I think it comes with 7 and 8. And then, there’s also a folder called off.

21:50
So, if you’re using windows authentication, additional file, and they’re easy to use, but assuming you’re not, just grab the 4.2 driver and make sure you have that.

21:59
Anything beyond 4.1, like four zeros after all, you know, and a support, so, no need to mess with those.

22:06
I’d say almost none of you should even be using 4.1, 4.2 as the one you want for now.

22:11
At some point, maybe they’ll move to these newer ones, but, as of now, 4.2 is the kind of gold standard here.

22:19
Another very helpful feature that they added at some point during the Cognos 11 life cycle was the ability to create these preservation files. So, all those drivers I just talked about, you know, they are in your installation directory. That driver’s folder.

22:34
But, if you are doing an over the top upgrade, you are going to lose those every time you apply a new version. So, if you’re staying cutting-edge with your Cognos and you are going from R 1 to 3 all the way through, every time you have create, there’s things like your images and your drivers, they’re going to get wiped out.

22:54
That’s just kind of how the upgraded works, you know, it’s getting better.

22:57
You don’t have to do the entire new, you know, installation to new directory and move everything like you did in the past, but you don’t want to lose those things. So they invented this preservation, preserve. text file.

23:08
So it’s going to be in your installation directory configuration slash preserve.

23:12
You’ll see this file, it’s fairly well documented. It’s going to kind of tell you, you know what?

23:17
Where to put the pieces of information it needs, and how they look. I think it gives you a couple of samples of how the folders and the images should be. But, what it does is, it’s going to before it upgrades.

23:26
It’s going to sort of isolate these things. So, I always like to put the drivers’ in there specifically.

23:31
Because I don’t want to have to go hunting data guy. Didn’t put them in the folder.

23:34
It’s easy to forget, especially when you try to start things up, and you have to wait, you know, 20 minutes for calculus to tell you that it’s failing.

23:41
If you preserve it, you don’t have to worry that you’ll do your upgrades. It’s going to make sure they’re fine.

23:46
If you have logos, and stock images, and things that you use in reports and dashboards, put them in there as well, so they don’t get lost, because then, you’re going to have to redo all that again.

23:55
So, other things like images, logos, if you have any JavaScript.

24:00
Probably a separate webinar, at some point, I’m talking about JavaScript, but that has changed.

24:03
If you’re not familiar as a new custom control, and everything’s server centralized now, which makes things much easier, it’s not copying and pasting. These JavaScript snippets Oliver to the page in a report by report an HTML blocks. Trying to debug was a nightmare. And if you made a change to one, depending on how many reports you have, that, then you had to go and touch each oneself.

24:25
Much cleaner. Everything centralized.

24:27
Now, those will get wiped though, if you don’t put them in your preservation file.

24:31
So make sure you list out where those JavaScript files are, otherwise you’re going to lose them.

24:36
And depending on, you know, if you’re building your own custom ones that may be a lot of effort and time spent there, so don’t lose, those. Are files if you’re using things like the audit extension tool? You probably had to create a war file.

24:47
There’s other, you know, integration with cargo is that use war files, put that directory in there, if you use any of them.

24:54
And then your certifications, if you have, you know, external starts for your l-dap, or you’re SSL.

24:59
Make sure those are preserved as well, because all those things are going to be a real pain to restore if you’re not taking care of them today.

25:06
So, always good to kind of build this. And once you going to have it, it’s going to be there forever. So, you can always add to it down the road, but these, you know, these 4 or 5 different areas, if you put them in today, you’ll be in good shape going forward.

25:20
As far as installing the, the releases, there’s different ways to do. I have a slide on this on the next screen, but, um, you know, it is essentially an over the top installation. So, I mentioned, you know, in the past, it was completely new.

25:33
Installation folder, you had to, you know, stop and start or use different ports and go through this whole process.

25:40
Now is just, you know, pointing to the directory, it’s going to realize that something is there, it’s also going to know what components are there.

25:46
So if you only installed the Content Manager, it’s going to know that it only has to install that piece. It’s not going to prompt you to pick a gateway or an application tier slash dispatchers. So it started to know what’s there. It will check that preservation file, and it’ll update all the files.

26:01
So they always do is just recite the services and you should see the new version Come up and all the new features. If there are any will be available once you do that.

26:09
However, you know, it has been very smooth, in my opinion, especially, you know, the second half of 11.0, there’s a couple of bumps early on, but it works very well.

26:19
There are always those exceptions. Things can, you know, go wrong, depending on multiple reasons.

26:24
So you can never really rollback your content store.

26:28
So if you do happen to upgrade, and either the version has a bug that is causing the major headaches, or is it just that not stable enough to use, and you want to rollback, you’re going to be in trouble.

26:40
So make sure you always backup and archive that content started, or just, it’s run the installer and hit start on the existing content store. Because once you upgraded, can upgrade that schema. You’re not going to get a roll it back.

26:52
So make sure you’re always backing us up and archiving those before you do an upgrade In case you do want to roll back.

26:58
You also want to make sure you export your cargoes configuration, so that you can grab that, depending on how complex and how many. Custom features you have outside of the environment.

27:10
Content stores, notification, stores, audit, mobile.

27:15
There’s lots of different things. L-dap settings can be a real nightmare, depending on how many custom settings you have there. So lots and lots of things that, you know.

27:23
And knowledge and time go into those.

27:25
So you can just export that to a file, put it somewhere outside the installation directory just so you have it, if it does get wiped during the upgrade. You can just drop it right back into your configuration folder. It should pick it up and you’ll be able to restore all of that.

27:39
And always check the supported software in …, so they keep this pretty well updated undocumented.

27:44
It’s fairly easy to use, I’ve provided the link, but it’ll tell you, if, you know, you’re on the edge of a database, or a browser, or something that you know, isn’t on the way to being no longer supported.

27:55
You’ll be able to see before you upgraded and say, hey, you know, we’re using no SQL Server 2008, but in Calculus 11, they stop support for that. The earliest version is 2012. That may be an issue.

28:07
So I don’t know if we can upgrade to kick us 11 until we update our database. And there’s all kinds of, you know, it’s a pretty thorough list of data sources both, you know, for your, for your content store as well as your reporting databases. They are different. This, they’re the browser’s application, servers is a really, really big list of all kinds of things with the versions. And some footnotes that kind of tell you whether things are going to be supported or not. So always good to make sure you’re in support that can run any to any issues after the upgrade.

28:36
And the samples are also being updated as well. So I usually recommend, especially at Dev or test environment, getting the samples. You’ll get to kind of see some of the new features and capabilities. I sometimes like to reverse engineer some of these things, and take them will pick them apart. And say, you know, how, how did they build this? OK, I see they’re using this new feature, I know, that was even, they’re kind of, helps you stay on top of your game. And in aware of, you know, all the new features, and functionality, the rolling out, you know what, we hope to see quarterly. It’s taking a little while for this new version to come out, but should be, hopefully, in the next week or two.

29:10
What we’re hearing is correct, So, I’m excited to see that. And, again, new samples always kind of keep you up to date.

29:16
I recently found this slide. This is a really helpful slot. I thought we get a lot of questions about, you know, How should I do my upgrade? You know, do I do it over the top, as I mentioned earlier, which I’d say, for most people, that’s going to be the cleanness and easiest way to do it.

29:33
There’s also the ability to do a separate product with an over the top content store upgrade as well, so, a new Draft new installation directory.

29:42
There’s also the option to do a brand-new install and the new content store database. And this chart, kind of, lists out the pros and cons of each.

29:49
I think it’s pretty, pretty helpful if you are, especially, you know, looking to clean up during an upgrade.

29:56
So, lots of our users, and probably lots of you out there, have been running Cognos for several years, 10 plus, maybe more. And, obviously, over time, your content is going to grow.

30:09
You’re going to have hundreds, if not thousands, or more, of reports. And, again, some of these things were built for specific need, that there’s no longer needed, or there’s multiple versions that were never cleaned up, and it’s just a lot of junk that can, that can build up over time. So, in some instances, it makes sense to kind of start with a fresh content store and move over just the things you need, and there’s different ways to kind of figure out what those are. Hopefully you have auditing turned on.

30:36
You can kind of lead, you know, run reports and see, you know, showing all the reports that have been run in the last year and use the time-stamps that are captured there to see, you know, what’s wrong. And you maybe notice. We have 10000 reports, but people only run these hundred.

30:49
You know, what’s going on these other, you know, 9000 reports that we’re not even using. So, it can give you an opportunity to, you know, really clean house and do it.

30:59
So I’m not going to go through, you know, all the details here, but um, essentially, you know it’s going to be different challenges in different areas depending on which approach you take.

31:08
So if you are having thoughts about you know trying to clean up, I would definitely take a look at this slide and see you know, if it’s going to be worth the time to do it, depending on how much work that is for you, but it can kind of help to get rid of some of that Bloat. We’ve seen some content store databases be over 80 gigabytes.

31:27
And, depending on what that is, where the old report, sometimes, people are scheduling, you know, a 300 page PDF to run every day and saving it into their, my folders, and it’s been running for 10 years. You know, there’s just massive amounts of junk that that can build-up and that’s going to steal your Cognos environment down. So, and then, you can do to, kind of clean that up, and, fresh and things up is going to be helpful.

31:48
Again, it’s going to be extra work and if you’re keeping it up to date and clean, and you want to just go from version to version, into place over the top, candidates or upgrade, it’s going to be the, the fastest and cleanest easiest way to do that.

32:00
But, it’s not always the right case. So, again, feel free to leverage this slide. I’ve provided the link to the community which you have if you haven’t been checking out lots of good blog posts from IBM on their different topics including upgrades and installations.

32:15
So I would recommend checking that out and using that for reference going forward.

32:22
That said. I’m going to turn it back over to Mike before we head back to the Q and A So I’ll talk to you a little bit and take some questions. Thank you. All right, Thanks a lot of Todd. So every stick around please that we are ignoring your questions. We answer them as I mentioned at the end of the presentation, so please get those questions in. We got some good ones teed up there for you.

32:42
But as Todd mentioned, we do offer here at Senturus as we do every day is do analytics and Todd’s practice focuses on things like upgrade assistance.

32:52
So we offer both a Quick start as well as a full upgrade implementation. So the Quick start release is your dev environment plus documentation. The full service implementation across all your environments is included in the full upgrade. If you’re interested in that you can visit the link in the deck here, or you can always e-mail us at info at…

33:13
.com or just give us a call.

33:16
So, again, stick around to answer your questions in the questions pane here, I’m going to give you a couple of, little overview of Senturus, is who we are, and what, what it is we do.

33:26
So, at send tourists our clients, know us for providing clarity from the chaos of complex, myriad business requirements, disparate data sources, and constantly moving targets. We’ve made a name for ourselves because of our strengths at Bridging the gap between IT and business users.

33:44
So we deliver solutions that give you access to reliable analysis, ready data across your organization, enabling you to quickly and easily get answers, at the point of impact, in the form of the decisions you make, and the actions you take.

33:58
Our consultants are leading experts in the field of analytics. They have years of Pragmatic, real-world expertise and experience advancing the state-of-the-art.

34:08
We’re so confident in our team, and our methodology that we backup our projects with a unique 100% money back guarantee.

34:18
Our client breadth gives you a great idea of the range of industries in which we have worked. We have delivered thousands of successful projects for hundreds of clients ranging from the Fortune 500 to the mid-market. We solve business problems across many industries, and functional areas, including the Office of Finance, Sales, and Marketing, Manufacturing, operations, HR, and IT.

34:38
So if you need someone to help you with your next analytics project, whatever that might be, requirements gathering, system architecture, data modeling, ETL, up to front end design, and all the things that that, Todd, all the great things Todd does in his organization. With upgrades, migrations, performance optimizations, et cetera, we’d love the opportunity to help to leverage our expertise in your organization.

35:04
So we have some great upcoming events. If you head over slash events, we have a great webinar, Tableau dashboards that captivate and communicate that’s on May 30th. So, you can go register for that over there. I’ll be presenting a webinar about migrating from Cognos and how best practices around that.

35:23
That’s on Thursday, May ninth and another webinar I’ll be presenting on using visual analytics tools with Trusted Cognos Data that’ll be on June six. So, visit senturus.com/events to keep abreast of all those events and register for them.

35:39
Additionally, if you head over to senturus.com/resources, the link is at the top.

35:45
You can access all of our upcoming events.

35:48
You can access our Great Resource Library, which is a fantastic resource that contains, again, all our webinars, tips, and tricks, best practices, thought leadership, and whatnot. And you can get all the recordings and the presentation decks, and the resources that go along with that all for free. And you can also visit our blog over there, which has all of the things that are top of mind here at Senturus is in a nice, bite sized format for you. So head over there. And then, lastly, here we have training options.

36:19
So if you head over to send tourists.com/training, we have several different options.

36:25
We have are regularly scheduled courses that cover more than 12 different topics.

36:31
They’re delivered live, hands-on, and interactive online with, with industry leading instructors. And we have pages over there that lets you or help you pick the right course for where you are in your in your maturity and expertise sort of life cycle with various tools like Cognos and Tableau. We also offer large group and private instruction.

36:54
So, if you want that customized or you want that on-site in your organization, we can do that for Cognos Tableau and Power BI. And recently, we added self-paced learning. So, it’s very cost effective.

37:06
Two way of learning fundamental concepts and light technical skills.

37:11
And through our sort of CBT or self-paced learning.

37:15
So, check that out. And then, so, now, we’ll go over to the Q and A here, and, again, you can answer, you can enter your questions in the questions pane, and we’ve got a bunch here.

37:26
So, Todd, I think you’d imagine, you’ve probably pulled a few out here that you want to sort of address. So, I’m sure have at it.

37:35
OK, first question I see is, is Ferric Manager still a standalone application? And the answer is, yes.

37:42
You know, as I kind of showed on the screenshots earlier, if you select the client tools, you’ll have the ability to kind of then select the framework manager and install that.

37:51
And, again, one of the nice things they added in, Caucus 11 is each modeling tool, whether it be Cube, Designer, Query, Analyzer, et cetera. They all kind of have their own installation directory now, so you’ll get a Model folder or a D DC model for dynamic cubes.

38:07
And it’ll kind of put it in that same, you know, program files, IBM Cognos slash, you know, whatever thing you’re installing. So its own standalone app. It’s got its own configuration tool which we want to plugin. You know the gateway and dispatcher, URIs to kind of generate those cryptographic keys the first time so it knows how to communicate. And then you’re off to the races.

38:28
So, you know, all those tools are still stand alone, they haven’t changed.

38:32
They just gave you kind of wanted one installer and groped for their, you know, I guess more popular modeling tools into one.

38:44
Let’s see.

38:47
Someone asked about the Oracle client and whether it’s 32 bit or 64 bit now, so depending on whether using compatible query mode or Dynamic Query mode, you’ll want to have 32 or 64 bit.

39:00
If you’re familiar with the Data Source Connections for Oracle, there’s sort of two tabs in OCI, the Oracle client, or the JDBC. So, you can use the JDBC for 64 bit.

39:11
You just drop that into the driver’s directory that we discussed, or if you want to use 32 bit, just make sure you have the Oracle 32 bit client installed on the server.

39:20
Metalwork either one.

39:21
So, that should be, all you need to use that.

39:26
Let’s see.

39:28
Someone asked about, is there package search for end users in the latest release?

39:33
I’m not sure what that means.

39:36
I think when you do search today, there’s, uh, the ability to filter the search results. And you can pick, I believe, reports packages.

39:46
Maybe data modules. I’m not sure the other options are, but I believe you can filter the report or the photo the search to look for specific things. So, if you had a report called sales and a package called Sales, you could check one of those boxes to see one or the other.

40:02
Yeah.

40:07
Their documentation on performing silent installations for both clean and over the top, specific for 11.1. I believe there’s documentation for that.

40:16
It’s changed a little bit, it’s probably fairly similar to 11.

40:21
There were some templates that you could grab from the IBM knowledge base.

40:27
That you could just sort of, you know, copy into a text file and just tweak it on ones and zeros to say, Yes, I want this component or zero, No, I don’t.

40:35
And then, once you kind of had that template, you could just, you know, use some, some flags on the command line to let it know it’s going to be a salary installation and what file to read it from.

40:47
It’s been a while since I’ve done one, but I’m fairly certain that’s a feature that a lot of people use, and they wouldn’t take that away.

40:52
So, check the 11.0.1, and maybe it has been updated for 11.O, but unless you’re having issues with 11.1, it should, should work for you.

41:04
My team is currently on 11.0.10, Support has advised that, I’ll create over 211.13, should be straight and over the top, so, yeah, that’s, I mean, you can definitely install any version over the top, on western 11. 0. one.

41:19
You can put any of the 11.0 releases or 11 not 1 Not 1 right Over the top. So, again, the, the over the top is going to be the cleanest, easiest way to upgrade. It’s going to make sure everything gets moved and upgraded. You don’t lose a thing.

41:33
It’s probably the least time consuming of the upgrades.

41:37
So, that’s a totally legitimate way to do your upgrade.

41:41
I was just kind of highlighting, there are other alternatives, and, depending on, the last time you really took a look at your content and thought about, you know, you have a lot of junk. Let’s clean this up.

41:52
There’s other options whether it’s, you know, a new install.

41:56
Um, or it’s a, you know, brand new content store and we’re going to pick and choose the pieces. There’s just different ways to do it.

42:03
But, I’d say, most people would typically do the over the top, especially with the effort they put into making that work and that was a challenge in earlier versions of Cognos. That works very well now.

42:12
So, yeah, if you’re going to go from 11, 10 to 11, 13, and kind of finalize that life cycle 4, 11 0, then over the top is totally fine.

42:25
Someone was asking when 11 next version, 11.1 will be available. I was expecting it to be out already by. Now there must be some delay in the QA process.

42:35
Maybe there was a late bug or something found, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, that they found it, but I haven’t heard the latest date. So I’m assuming it should be really any day now. They kind of just pop up occasionally out of the blue, but I would expect it definitely sometime next month, if not sooner, because I know they’d like to do about for a year. And it’s been only about 4 or 5 months now since 11.1 came out.

43:04
So, looking forward to get my hands on that will try to do an updated deck on any changes that are involved with the installation or configuration, once we get our hands on it.

43:17
Let’s see.

43:20
Another question about installing over the top.

43:30
See.

43:33
Breathing tend not to implant upgrade to 11.

43:37
You could send us information on licensing.

43:40
Obviously, 10.2 11 is going to be a brand-new install. You can obviously go over the top on 10.2.

43:47
So, it’s either, you know, a new directory, preferably a new server, Get here.

43:53
Your operating system updated to the latest version, if you can. And we’re going to do that upgraded since it’s a big one. And then 111, you can obviously do over the tops.

44:03
So, he was saying at the support software link failed, it may have changed. So, let me check and see that.

44:08
Get that fixed.

44:13
Oracle compatibility with the latest version of Oracle release. I’ll, I’ll get that link fixed. That shows all the information. It’s pretty easy. If you’re looking for it right now, you can just Google supported software for Cognos analytics.

44:26
Should be, if not, the first, one of the top hits you get on a Google search. So, I apologize for the bad link, but, if you’re looking for it, just does get that that’ll tell you exactly what versions of Oracle and other components that you need to use.

44:43
Someone is asking about whether the IIS configuration is acquired, not required or recommended? Again?

44:49
I’d say most people prefer to have Single Sign on and, you know, not have to login annually over and over again.

44:55
I, I know, I have enough passwords that I have to remember, and even getting one website or more to, you know, automatically log me in based on my Windows credentials, is appreciate it. So, things like that and image browsing web dev, if you want it, you know, allow users to browse them to the image directories and drag things into their reports. All that good stuff is going to be required with, you know, IIS or Apache gateway slash web server.

45:20
Again, not required but definitely recommended.

45:25
Let’s see.

45:30
Someone’s asking about cleaning up 10.2 reports and dashboards upgrading to 11.1.

45:39
I need to know more specifics about that. But again, if you have the audit reports enabled, you know, you can kind of rank things, or, you know, put some photos on there and kind of drag that whole list of reports that have been run and see, you know, what’s, what’s being used and what isn’t. And target those specific. No.

45:59
Frequently use reports and then maybe, you know.

46:02
Figure out which ones you want to archive. You can still bring them over but maybe archive them and see if anybody complains, and then you’ll know right away if someone’s looking for reports that you just missed, or, you know, maybe only one person using it, but they still needed. So us. Different ways to kind of target that. If you have specific questions, feel free to reach out to some terrorist. We can take a look at your case by case basis. But um, yeah, without knowing too much about it, the audit report, so you’re best way to do that.

46:29
And obviously, you know, dashboards and Cognos tend not to, are totally different than what we consider a dashboard, and caucus 11, typically, you can point to it with something with, you know, Workspace, or just the report with, you know, a bunch of queries and objects on it. It wasn’t really a real dashboard, but those should come over. And you can obviously build some better looking one with a new visualization engine that’s in 11 0 or 11 0 1.

46:59
Um.

47:02
It’s a pretty specific question. I’m going to skip that one, come back to it in the notes.

47:10
So, when asked about going from version 10 directly to 11.1, there shouldn’t be any issue with that, either.

47:18
The, the reports and I’m a version of tenure on but they shouldn’t, it shouldn’t make a big difference.

47:23
We we actually had a client who moved from Tiger seven to Cognos 11 and mostly, obviously, a cube shop transformer keys but those same transformer cubes we were able to drop right into the cargo slash environment and they were able to use them in reports and dashboards, you know, from day one. So, obviously, content was different, built differently in … reports itself, where we’re able to be migrated, but.

47:50
Anything in Cognos 10 should be, you know, to kick us 11. With the exception of some really custom stuff, maybe some custom JavaScript that has changed.

47:58
But assuming you’re using the beta basic calculus functionality, I would expect to be anything that would prevent you from moving from 10 directly to 11.1.

48:08
First manager is still a 32 bit app. That hasn’t changed.

48:11
I don’t think they’ll ever change most of the apps, I think the only app that’s actually 64 bit is the query analyze your tool.

48:20
There are two different versions. You can download 32 bit and 64 bit, but they don’t. They’re not going to really change, though, such as how they are.

48:26
They’ll, they’ll just run on the server when you need them, but they don’t need to be 64 bit, and they’re not going to I’m not going to change that.

48:35
Someone asking about the samples. Had they been upgraded since version 11.0.12?

48:41
Wondering if I need to get the new ones?

48:43
So, depending on, Again, I don’t know if they’ve released samples for released 13, which I think was just sort of a support release, 11.1.1, definitely as brand-new samples that you’re going to want to get that use.

48:57
The exploration tool, there’s sort of some sample decks and there. I think they added some new dashboards that use some of the new visualizations. There’s definitely a lot of new stuff.

49:07
In the 11.1, that one samples, and I didn’t mention this, but there, the way you get samples has changed as well, That used to be something that you would get the passport advantage when he went and downloaded the server installation tools and the for advantages, All that stuff is no longer there.

49:22
You have to go to the, I believe it’s the analytics blog.

49:28
I’ll try to get that link I posted in the Q&A once we post that, but there’s a separate link now to get the samples. They’re no longer putting it or making it required with a password and a passport advantage ID. You can just go out and download directly from IBM’s main sort of analytics blog area.

49:48
Someone’s saying that IBM is knowledge based site might be down. And maybe that’s why their links aren’t working. I’ll try to confirm that.

49:56
Somebody asked me about single sign on, Had a do that or document that.

50:03
I don’t have time to go into all the details, but, you know, there, if you’re using the script and using, I ask the windows. It’s very easy. There’s just a parameter and that script that says true or false.

50:13
So, true in your AD Configuration and Caicos because they make sure you have the single sign on slash identity mapping property set and that should pretty much do it for you.

50:27
Get if you’re having trouble beyond that, please reach out and you can take a look and see what’s going on. But it’s gotten pretty straightforward as far as the steps they do most of it for you.

50:39
So, I’m asking about hardware sizing. I’ll have to kind of take that offline.

50:43
I think that’s pretty much it.

50:47
All the questions I didn’t get to, I will.

50:51
I will respond to you in a formal document that will get posted with this recording and slide deck in the next week or so.

50:59
So if I didn’t get to your question, definitely check back in a little bit, and I will hopefully respond any questions you have at that time.

51:09
And feel free to post additional ones for the, we end the meeting here. And I’ll make sure those get answered as well.

51:16
Great. Thanks, Todd. And I was very informative. And speedier would say, so thank you, all for joining us today. As Todd mentioned, we’ll get this posted as soon as we can. If you have other questions or need any help with your analytics environment, please feel free to reach us at our website, at the info@ senturus.com e-mail address, or good old-fashioned AAA number. Also encourage you to reach out and connect to us via our various social media connections on LinkedIn and slide share YouTube, Twitter, and on Facebook. So thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate it. And we look forward to seeing you on the next installment of the Senturus Knowledge Series. Thanks, Todd. For a great presentation. And have a great rest of your day, everyone.