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TM1 9.5.1 and IBM Cognos BI 10.1 integration

This week I had to advise a customer who has just purchased IBM Cognos 10.1 Business Intelligence on the best way to integrate their existing TM1 9.4 environment with the latest release of BI.

My initial thought was that they were going to require an upgrade of their TM1 servers to 9.5.1, but to be sure I thought I would have a look around the internet and try to find some information to back me up. When I found very little I decided to have a chat with an IBM Cognos support rep, the person who provided the answer was very thorough and more than helpful:

"Q:
Is this integration possible between TM1 9.5.1 and IBM Cognos BI 10.1?

A:
Yes.

Q:
Can earlier versions of TM1 such as 9.4 be integrated with or reported from
IBM Cognos BI 10.1?

A:
From a technical point of view, it is possible for TM1 Version 9.4.1 and
9.5 being integrated or reported from IBM Cognos BI 10.1, see the IBM
website listing the Software Environments supported by Cognos BI 10.1 ->

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27019126

Cognos Business Intelligence 10.1 Software Environments

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27019126#olap

which lists TM1 Version 9.4.1 and 9.5 as having status "Compatible" when
used as an OLAP Datasource to BI.

But we do NOT recommend such a configuration / environment as TM1
Development has not tested and will not test TM1 Version 9.4.1 or 9.5
against Cognos BI 10.1. Thus Cognos BI 10.1 is neither a Software
Environment supported by TM1 Version 9.4.1 nor by TM1 Version 9.5.
Thus you must upgrade to TM1 Version 9.5.1 if you intend to use Cognos BI 10.1.
That is the reason why the TM1 Version 9.5.1 is the only version of TM1 for
which interoperability with Cognos BI 10.1 hs been officially announced.
That is also the very reason why only for TM1 Version 9.5.1 the TM1
Portlets for Cognos BI 10.1 have been released.

If you check the IBM website on the Software Enviroments supported by TM1
Version 9.4.1 ->

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27014836
Cognos TM1 9.4 MR1 Software Environments

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27014836#tm1_fragments
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27014836#tm1_olap_bi

you will notice that Cognos BI 10.1 is NOT listed as a Supported
Environment, neither for the TM1 Fragments aka TM1 Portlets nor for using
TM1 as an OLAP datasource to BI.

If you check the IBM website on the Software Enviroments supported by TM1
Version 9.5 ->

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27017362
Cognos TM1 9.5 Software Environments

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27017362#tm1_fragments

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27017362#tm1_olap_bi

you will notice that Cognos BI 10.1 is NOT listed as a Supported
Environment, neither for the TM1 Fragments aka TM1 Portlets nor for using
TM1 as an OLAP datasource to BI.

If you check the IBM website on the Software Enviroments supported by TM1
Version 9.5.1 ->

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018895
Cognos TM1 9.5.1 Software Environments

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018895#portlets

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018895#olap

you will notice that Cognos BI 10.1 is listed as a Supported Environment.

A personal recommendation:

To my knowledge, within the next 4 to 8 weeks TM1 Version 9.5.2 will be
released. Shortly after the release of TM1 9.5.2 the Fixpack 1 (FP1) for
Cognos BI 10.1 will be released. The BI integration between TM1 Version
9.5.2 and Cognos 10.1 FP1 has been greatly improved compared to the
previous BI integration between TM1 Version 9.5.1 and Cognos BI 10.1 in
terms of performance, stability and user experience.

Thus I recommend to start now with TM1 Version 9.5.1 and Cognos BI 10.1,
but prepare to perform an upgrade to TM1 Version 9.5.2 and Cognos 10.1 FP1
in the near future."

So, I believe that this information is very much worth sharing with anyone out there looking for information on how to integrate TM1 with IBM Cognos 10 Business Intelligence 10.1 - sometimes its just nice to have the answers in one place in nice plain english!

IBM Cognos 10 - IBM Cognos Mobile

With iOS devices now supported within IBM Cognos 10, I supposed it was now time to have a go at installing IBM Cognos 10 - IBM Cognos Mobile.  We use iPhones as standard and have a few iPads to hand also, we never did have any Blackberrys to test with.

The install process was very simple, as with the other products there are Gateway Components and Application Client components: -

Once the software is installed there are a couple of extra bits inside IBM Cognos Configuration, namely an environments section setting for your Blackberry Enterprise Server, a Service setting and a Data Access section called "Mobile" which needs a database such as the Content Store and Notification Store etc.

Once these are configured and the application is restarted, connecting to http://servername/ibmcognos will present you with a screen to select the full or mobile clients. This only happens when accessing from a mobile browser, so desktop users won't get affected.

Once you are in and have selected to use the IBM Cognos Mobile version you will be presented with your IBM Cognos Connection window.

Navigating down the folders will take you to your reports which can be run using a touch-friendly layout.

Even the prompt selections lists are shown using familiar formats.

The Sample reports are displayed with ease using the iPad's screen.  With a bit of work they can likely be improved upon and fine-tuned for mobile devices, but the standard view works well and delivers a nice interface for quick easy access without a laptop.

Configuring Failover for IBM Cognos 8.5.1 Controller

Over the last couple of months an unusually high number of customers (i.e. more than zero) have all been asking the same question... "can you tell us how to create a DR failover solution for IBM Cognos Controller?" - this is a question that got me scratching my head somewhat.

We already know that you can "split the COM+" components in Controller to separate out such functions as  Consolidation, this isn't so much fail-over as a crude form of load-balancing or load-sharing.  But can you actually create a fail-over for IBM Cognos Controller?

One of the methods we considered initially, involved the use of Microsoft Clustering, this sounds viable in theory, however a phone call to IBM support suggested that this would not be supported. 

After this blow a couple of more "realistic" options came to mind: -

1. Cold-Standby
2. DNS Alias

With one particular client we decided that they would utilise their test environment to trial one of the above.  It was decided that the cold-standby method was not desirable as they did not want to have to power one server up manually and risk the possibility of both servers becoming available at once in the event that the other box was not shut down.

What we did was to install two separate servers, each with their own IBM Cognos BI and Controller components.
The BI server has to point at its own "real" server name or DNS name, if you use the same DNS alias for both servers within BI it causes problems within the Content Manager when the second server tries to register its dispatchers.

The IBM Cognos Controller Configuration application however needs to be pointed to the DNS Alias, this way when the Controller client etc all look for the server, they are looking for the same thing each time.

On the face of things, this seemed to work, basic testing showed that we could switch servers quite easily by altering the DNS alias record, however I still had an uneasy feeling about this as the COM+ components for Controller would still be running on each server at the same time.

A week or so later, there had been a number of complaints about strange behaviour with Controller, the software was randomly unavailable or not responding.  Each time a reboot of the active server seemed to solve the problems.
We suggested that it may be worthwhile turning off the "standby" server for a week or so to see if things improved.

After just over one week, there had been no problems, this pointed at a problem with having two identically configured Controller servers turned on at once.

So it seems, for the time being at least, you cannot automatically, or even semi-automatically fail-over IBM Cognos Controller.  We reverted to a cold-standby scenario which seems to be working well for now.

If you have any different experiences, or if you have managed to make this work somewhere, please feel free to get in touch, I am sure there are many customers out there looking for a similar solution.