Extracting from a discussion from sql.ru forum: PowerPlay performs very bad when it comes to large and sparse (with big number of nulls and zeros) cross-tabs. Modern OLAP engines are specially optimized forNonEmpty MDX clause, which is default report generation option. PowerPlay was designed for fast cross-tab rendering and maximum amount of calculations on client machine. Nobody [...]
Just a link to developerWorks thread where Phil_W gives an excellent explanation. Note this guy, all his post are truly brilliant: concise, informative and insightful. I use ProcessExplorer to find PIDs too. And all the rules for Oracle BI temp files stay in place — I\O speed is crucial, use SSD )
“Okay, this column in our BI metadata was supposed to be named Sales, not Sals. But when we change it, what will happen to the reports that were created, using this name? And how many reports use this column anyway? Maybe we shouldn’t touch anything to keep things working…” Ever been in such situation? This [...]
I consider Single Sign-On setup through Active Directory(AD) a key point in every system’s life. Up to this point — it’s just a PoC, a prototype or a department (10-20 users) level application. AD integration step is usually prosponed, because it’s documented somewhere and there are much more important things to do, like showing that [...]
This post spent a year in drafts -( But Macro functions are an interesting feature of Cognos BI and sometimes their usage is unavoidable. You can use macro functions in Report Studio to do some manipulations with prompt values before they are used for actual processing in filters, report functions, etc. As a general (and [...]
Since I’ve spent some time working with Oracle Business Intelligence last year, I think I’d write a simple comparison list of strengths\weaknesess of OraBI EE vs Cognos (see post on the same topic by Venkatakrishnan). All of this is imho, of course. Oracle BI EE Pro’s: 1) Aggregate navigation – ability to set up aggregate [...]
You know why i’ve started this blog in the first place? To get advice, of course. And today DesiCresnet shared a wonderfull piece of information concerning memory troubles in BI 8.3. Those who aren’t struck by occasional CAM-AAA-0071 “An internal error occurred” which stops the whole server can skip this post. This error was discussed [...]
Just a quick hint and a reminder: there is a configuration option forcing Cognos to store temporary report results in memory rather than dropping them on disk. It’s especially usefull for DMR’s they are frequently cached on disk. Quote from Architecture and Deployment Guide. Depending on the size of reports and the amount of available [...]
Finally got my hands to installing and trying it. Well, it looks nice, allows flash-based chart formating and turns Cognos portal pages into more dynamic “dashboards”. But it’s strangely slow (tried on a couple of computers) and all in all looks kinda “alpha” and plugged in at last moment. Installation is not that easy too, [...]
Correcting myself. I was ranting about MS SQL and Cognos interaction. I was totally wrong. The problem, described shortly is: you have 2 databases in MS SQL residing on the same physical server you create a join “table A from db1 with table B from db2” Cognos creates two select queries (select * from db1.A) [...]