Impromptu Admin Catalog Menu Prob 1

[JGirl]

Hi,

I'm trying to modify an impromptu catalog, but when i open the catalog in impromptu admin, I cannot view any of the options from the 'Catalog' menu (ie. Tables, Properties, Folders, User Profiles, Joins etc).

Does anyone know what causes this?

J

 

[binway]

I find it is usually that some one else is using the catalog to create reports. You may need to take a copy of the catalog and put it into another directory, make the required changes and copy it into your production environment when no one is using the original. I would generally adivse you to have two envrioments - one is development/testing that only you and your development team can see - the other is the production area that your users work from.

Hope this helps

Regards

 

[JGirl]

That would probably explain it. Hmmmm....a development environment...ha! Im dreaming!

Thanks
J

 

[binway]

Sure you can create a development environment. Create a directory somewhere ( network drive, PC anywhere ) call it Cognos Dev. Have subdirectories called Catalogs, Reports, Macros, Prompts or whatever structure you want and copy your production stuff into these directories. Hack away to your hearts content as even if your data source is Production data you are only reading it and can do no harm. You can even take this a step further by doing a bit of versioning as well. eg The catalog in production would always be called (as an example) Production.cat but in your development directory you have Productionv0.1.cat Productionv0.2.cat so you can keep a record of your changes. And if you are really keen I believe ( although I have never done it)you can track your changes by comparing your .icr files in Word using the compare document function but that may be going a bit too far.

Regards

Binway

 

[amitp555]

Hi,

I guess this is because there are 2 kind of Impromptu versions that can be installed on the desktop. One is for user and one for admin. In user kind you won't see those options enabled.

 

[DoubleD]

Binway makes some good points, however there are several things I would be concerned with.
One would be using periods in your file names. This will confuse a lot a computers. And will most definitely cause problems if you ever tried to publish it to IWR.
The other issue would be with:

Hack away to your hearts content as even if your data source is Production data you are only reading it and can do no harm.

Anytime you run a report against a database, you are taking resources. Depending on the size of report you're attempting to run, this could have a negative impact on performance for your users.

Pain is stress leaving the body.

DoubleD