Problem with Cognos 7 and Active Directory

[bustell]

I am having several problems using Access Manager to connect to our Directory Server (Microsoft). The actual connection seems to be working as it says the Directory Server is responding and I am able to create namespaces.


-- Having trouble adding a user? I add the general information, User Signon information, give it access to a data source and set the user class membership. A this point I click OK and I receive the following error: An Internal Error has occurred in Access Manager.

-- Despite not being able to add users, we have somehow added a couple users that can not be deleted. As soon as you click on one of them I receive this error: Problems have been detected within the namespace. After this error, the namespace appears to go away until you open Access Manager again.

-- I have yet to find any good documentation about Cognos and Active Directory (Microsoft) including Cognos documentation (which seems to be confusing). Has anyone found some good Cognos installation and setup documentation?

-- We have our Active Directory grouped by Organizational Units. Is there a way to specify those in Access Manager?

-- Could someone give me a general overview of how Cognos uses Active Directory (Microsoft)? What information in Access Manager is actually stored on the Active Directory.

I know this is a lot to ask, but I am really out of ideas and time. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
Pat B

 

[CosmicNerd]

I am trying to set up Active Directory myself, but not in the next few days unfortunately. Theoretically it should be the same as using Netscape, holding the same data, since it's all LDAP format. You've got the connection, so your problem is clearly the "internal error" message. I did find something in the Access Manager help:

"Error Message When Adding Objects Containing the Same Basic Letter Configuration Using Active Directory Server

If you try to add more than one object, such as namespaces, users, or user classes, that contain the same basic letter configuration and you are using Active Directory as your directory server, you may receive the following error message in Access Manager - Administration:

An internal error has occurred in Access Manager.

Active Directory does not allow two objects to contain the same basic letter configuration. For example, you cannot add a user named "coté" followed by another user named "cote".
340170a
"

 

[bustell]

Thanks for your response. Since I posted this message, we have found out that Cognos only really uses Active Directory as a place to store security information not so much to integrate with the network logins.

Our goal was to tightly tie Cognos logins with our network logins. From what I now understand, this is not possible. Cognos has said that true integration is not available yet.

Here is a quote from Cognos:

"Cognos can use Netscape Directory Server or Microsoft Active Directory Server to store security information in its products. Access Manager uses LDAP servers to store and manage the Cognos user and user class data. This can be used in conjunction with Windows Challenge/Response (Windows Integrated Authentication on Windows 2000), to provide a seamless login experience to the users.

Access Manager stores Cognos security information on top of the information in a customers current LDAP server. It is not possible at present to use already created users from Microsoft Active Directory Server, as they will not have the Cognos specific user attributes. They can be output to a file and then automatically imported into a Cognos namespace. You will need two namespaces to store the users. We plan to be able to take advantage of these external user definitions - but in a future release. "

So for now, I don't think we will be using Active Directory at all.
Pat B

 

[CosmicNerd]

... which explains why Cognos are so coy about using Active Directory! Thanks for your response.