Problem with upgrade from Cognos 8 MR1 to MR2

[ksolutions]

I just wanted to post some issues that I've come across in the upgrade from Cognos 8 MR1 to MR2 with Report Studio to see if any of you guys have run into the same thing or have feedback.

#1) Known issue with Cognos (problem #528798, expected to be fixed in next release): when attempting to validate your report, the response is "The server response is invalid." This happens with every single report. This is possibly annoying enough to make me roll back to MR1.

#2) Report performance is ridiculously worse in MR2, especially if you have a prompt page.

#3) Can't view generated SQL/MDX in the query properties when you have a summary/detail filter. Even something simple like "[Order Date] in_range ?Date?"

Let me know if you've run into the same issues, and if you decided to roll back to MR1 as a result.

 

[rkiss]

Hi,

I never experienced issue 1 or 2 with MR2 upgrade...However, issue 3 is a known issue in our company...have logged a case against this issue...

Thanks

Roman

 

[kvintus]

We're experiencing all 3 issues with MR2 on Solaris. I don't see the same problems when running Cognos 8 MR2 on Windows. What OS are you running Cognos 8 MR2 on? Did you ever find a solution to any of these issues?

 

[ksolutions]

Hi Kvintus,

No, we haven't found a solution to any of these issues. We are running Cognos 8 MR2 on windows server 2003 with MS SQL database. Oh well -- thanks for the feedback!

-ksolutions

 

[misscognos]

issue 2 interests me.. what type of data source are you going against? relational or olap? could you elaborate on it?

as for issue 3, do the reports run despite not being able to generate the sql in rs?

 

[kvintus]

We're using Oracle 9.2.

Our reports run, but the only way to see the SQL is to turn on Audit Native SQL and look at the server logs.

 

[kvintus]

Are you using any Component Layout References in your Cognos 8 reports? Here's some info from a posting I made on Component Layout References.

We have been having severe performance problems with Cognos 8 MR2 and just discovered that a big part of the problem is due to Component Layout References. When we changed the Embed attribute to Copy from Reference, the time to load the prompt page went from 75 seconds to 18 seconds on one machine and from 40 seconds to 10 seconds on another/faster machine. Beware of using Component Layout References.

Some details are that we're running on Solaris and we use 2 reports as master reports and then have all of our reports use Component Layout References to the 2 master reports to get things like prompt labels, headers, footers, etc.

 

[TDYoda]

Before you decide to rollback from MR2 to MR1, Cognos Support told us that the Content Manager database is changed and you can't rollback without restoring the Content Manager database. We were too deep into development after installing MR2 to go back to MR1.

We also found out from Cognos Support that hot fix packages released between Maintenance Releases are not regression tested. They are only unit tested against the reported issue. You get to figure out if the fix tips over the cart somewhere else.

 

[CognosProfessional]

I found that alot of these issues were resolved with prompt properties changes in Framework mgr and table designs, i.e.: changing the joins to shortcuts and grouping to avoid hitting large tables together. Speeds up everything. i have win2k3 & mr2 & sqlserver, and wouldn't consider going back to mr1. Alot of tweaking, but pays off in the end.

CP

 

[loysqc]

Hello

We had upgraded our Cognos 8 server to Cognos 8 MR2 .... jumping above MR1 ... and we had one of the problems you mentionned

("The server response is invalid.")

Actually I resolve it by modify the buisness model in Framework Manager ... some of our SQL and relationship where not compatible with the new Query Analyser of the Reportnet Server MR2 .... to find it I had to remove columns on the report until Report Studio can validate the report. At that time I knew where was te problem and I look at the SQL and try an other way to write it or simply by changing the way he is executed (See the link "Option" of the "Query information Tab" in the Query subject editor.

Little advice for you ... to gain time look for the column with complex sql behind.

About the prompt page .... Fortunatly for us it's a lot more faster with this new version.

Regards

L-D