Server Administration
You can perform the server administration tasks
that help you manage and maintain your IBM® Cognos® system and tune performance.
You should be familiar with the IBM Cognos components and with how they are installed and configured. If you installed IBM Cognos servers or components on more than one computer, all functionality can be controlled through system administration. For information about the IBM Cognos environment, see the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Installation and Configuration Guide and the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Architecture and Deployment Guide.
For some server administration tasks, you use IBM Cognos Administration and must have the required permissions to the access administration functionality Secured Functions and Features.
- Dispatchers and Services
The dispatcher is the entry point for IBM Cognos service requests sent by a Web server gateway or other software. The dispatcher handles the routing requests and balances the load of user requests to the various IBM Cognos services. - Content Manager Locations
Your installation may include more than one Content Manager, each on a different location. One Content Manager computer is active and one or more Content Manager components are on standby. - Overriding the default locale processing in the prompt cache
You can override the locale processing in the prompt cache for all reports. - Content store maintenance tasks
You can create content maintenance tasks and run them on demand, at a scheduled time or based on a trigger. - Tune Server Performance
You should include performance tuning as a regular part of administering servers. - Tuning Metric Studio connections
You can set Metric Studio parameters that control the number of established connections to the database server and how long unused connections are left open. - Tune cache for the repository service
You can tune the cache for the repository service. There are various sizing properties that can be set for local memory and disk resources. Settings can be unique on each dispatcher. - Concurrent Query Execution
Depending on your environment, you may be able to improve report run performance by enabling concurrent query execution. - Session Caching
In Report Studio, Query Studio, and IBM Cognos Viewer the results for previous requests to the database are cached for the duration of a session when session caching is enabled. - Enabling the HTTPOnly parameter to secure the CAM passport cookie
CAM passport identifies the user's web browser session with the server. Administrators can set the HTTPOnly attribute to block scripts from reading or manipulating the CAM passport cookie during a user's session with the web browser. - Parameters cache
In IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, if parameters caching is enabled, prompt pages run more quickly. As a result, overall server performance can improve. By default, parameters caching is disabled at the server level. To enable parameters caching for all reports, you can change the server setting. To override the server setting for a report, you can edit the XML attributes for a report specification. - Reduce Decimal Precision
You can set decimal precision in crosstab reports. - External object store to store the report output locally
You can configure Content Manager to store report outputs to a local drive or network share by defining an external object store. - Saved report output
You can specify where to save copies of report output files. - Configuring the report and batch report services to use large worksheets
Administrators can enable support for large Microsoft Excel 2007 worksheets. When this is done, worksheets with up to 1 048 576 rows are supported. - Dynamically naming worksheet tabs in Excel 2007 reports
In IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, when the advanced property RSVP.EXCEL.PAGEGROUP_WSNAME_ITEMVALUE is set to true, the tabs in Excel 2007 output are dynamically named according to the page breaks that are specified. - Configuring the lineage solution
Lineage provides details about data in a report, such as the data source and calculation expressions. You can configure the default IBM Cognos software lineage solution, the IBM InfoSphere® Metadata Workbench lineage tool, or a custom lineage solution. - Configure the IBM InfoSphere Business Glossary URI
If your organization uses the IBM InfoSphere Business Glossary, you can also access the Glossary in IBM Cognos software from IBM Cognos Viewer, and from the metadata tree in Report Studio, Query Studio, and Analysis Studio. - Configuring the Collaboration Discovery URI
You can configure IBM Cognos Business Intelligence and IBM Cognos Workspace to use IBM Connections for collaborative decision-making. Integration with IBM Connections allows business users to collaborate while creating or viewing reports, performing analysis, or monitoring workspaces. Users have access to IBM Connections activities from within IBM Cognos Workspace and to the IBM Connections homepage from within IBM Cognos BI and IBM Cognos Workspace. - Enabling job, SMTP, and task queue metrics
By default, only the queue length metric for job, task, and SMTP queue metrics is enabled. Other metrics are also available for each but are set to zero and do not appear in the user interface unless you enable them. - Setting lifetime of completed human tasks and annotations (comments)
You can set the lifetime of completed annotations and human tasks. - Changing Drill-Through Filter Behavior
You can change the dynamic drill-through filter behavior if you want drill-through to generate a filter using the Member Business Key instead of the default Member Caption. - Restricting searches of IBM Cognos content
To avoid system degradation caused by unrestricted searches of large Content Manager data stores, administrators can restrict search activity so that only index search is available to users. - Controlling whether URL parameters are sent to Content Manager
For performance considerations, IBM Cognos Connection does not automatically forward URL parameters with queries to Content Manager. - Printing from UNIX operating systems
The RSVP.PRINT.POSTSCRIPT property controls which interface to use to print PDF documents from a UNIX operating system. If you want to continue using the Adobe Acrobat PDF interface, set the value of this property to false. - Adding Cognos Workspace domains to the valid domain list
You must use valid domains for URLs in toolbox widgets in IBM Cognos Workspace. Add the domains that Cognos Workspace users will use to the Valid Domain List. - Preventing content store locking when you add or update numerous schedules
In IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, when numerous schedules are added or updated, the content store database can lock if the schedules contain invalid data. If you experience this problem, you can set an advanced property that validates schedule properties and disables invalid schedules.