Saving Reports under personal newsboxes 2

[mbusa]

We allow users to save cognos reports under their personal newsboxes in upfront. The server hard disk is running out of space now as there are tons of reports saved. How do i decide which ones to delete. Where exactly are they saved. How do I know which file was saved by which user ?
So far I have been able to find a directory with tons of reports saved, but their names are sort of encrypted or something so I don't know which user saved them. so far my best guess is to sort them by date and delete the oldest ones to start with 1

Any suggestions ?


[highlight]M.Bajwa

http://www.nextgenlogic.com/bajwa

[/highlight]

 

[GJParker]

mbusa

Just clearing the files from the server will not remove the links from upfront your users will end up with lots of empty links.

I use this script to show details of my upfront environment, paste the following code into notepad and save as describe.utml in the \Program Files\Cognos\cer3\templates\upfront\en\standard70\ie4 directory.

<utml:content>
<DescribeNewsBox RequestId="1" numlevels="1">
<filter><select>*</select></filter>
</DescribeNewsBox>
</utml:content>

<utml:content>
<DescribeNewsItem RequestId="2" numlevels="1">
<filter><select>*</select></filter>
</DescribeNewsItem>
</utml:content>

<utml:content>
<DescribeNewsItemShortcut RequestId="3" numlevels="1">
<filter><select>*</select></filter>
</DescribeNewsItemShortcut>
</utml:content>

<b>NEWSBOXES:</b> </br>
<utml:presentation RequestId="1">
<%UP.Name%>, <%UP.ID%> </br>
</utml:presentation>

<b>NEWSITEMS:</b> </br>
<utml:presentation RequestId="2">
<%UP.FullName%>, <%UP.ID%>, <%UP.CREATEDATE%> </br>
</utml:presentation>

<b>SHORTCUTS:</b> </br>
<utml:presentation RequestId="3">
<%UP.FullName%>, <%UP.ID%>, <%UP.CREATEDATE%> </br>
</utml:presentation>

To call the template use the following command -

http://<servername>/cognos/cgi-bin/...><template>describe.utml</template></getpage>

The upfront developers guide provides more information on how to use XML commands including how to delete newsbox items, you may want to give this a look.

HTH

Gary



Gary Parker
MIS Data Analyst
Manchester, England

 

[drlex]

mbusa,
Are you sure it's the users reports that are filling up the disk? I can only speak for PPWR, but I have a few hundred reports and they occupy just over 2MB on the disk.

What I find irritating is that when a report is deleted in upfront, the report remains on the disk, but given the size of each report (20Kb), I haven't found space to be an issue yet.


BTW Nice code, Gary.

soi la, soi carré

 

[mbusa]

Thanx for the responses guys.
First of all that was a very good & effecive piece of code. Thanx Gary. I went back and checked and the exact location I am talking about is in the published reports folder.

So I go inside the published reports folder and see a folder for each of my newsboxes.

Each of these folders has 3 folders "apps", "hot", "output"

When i opened the output folder i was amazed to see it had tons of pdf files. They were named like
42c00d5b222.pdf

So its then that I realised that whenever a report is run on upfront , a version of it is somehow stored in this output folder. Why is that happening ? Can I change this setting. The output folder is about 3.5 GB !

And remember , now we know that a user does not have to save the report. He just runs it and it is somehow always saved under the output folder.

Whats next guys ?






[highlight]M.Bajwa

http://www.nextgenlogic.com/bajwa

[/highlight]

 

[GJParker]

mbusa

The output folder only contains reports that have been saved by the users or schedules. any interactive reports should only save a copy in the temp folder and these should be deleted when the report is closed

check where your temporary files are saved

In Windows, temporary files may stored in the locations specified by
• the Temp value in the [Services] section of the cern.ini file
• the "temporary data path" value in the [Default Directories] section of the Impromptu.ini file
By default, these files specify the same temporary file location as the TEMP system variable.

HTH

Gary Parker
MIS Data Analyst
Manchester, England

 

[mbusa]

Here's the update Gary
I first looked for cern.ini & Impromptu.ini files on the server. I could not find cern.ini but i did find Impromptu.ini. the first line of this file stated

[Default Directories]
temporary data path=C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1.LAC\LOCALS~1\Temp

so I checked this directory and there was a lot of files most of them with the following file name format

~imp21144421a297c9c.tmp ( each of these files is 64 Kb )

So i did not care.

Then I logged in as a regular user and ran a couple of reports. I ran them all and closed them all. ( DID not even go close to the save button ! )

Then i went back to the output folder and sorted all the report by date. And to my surprise the reports that i had just run were sitting there in pdf format !

There has to be some setting where all my reports are saved by default whether the user saves them or not.

The size of the output folder on my production server is 30 GB. ( I finally figured out where all the space was going ! )

So now I'm still stuck with my original question. How do i know which reports in this 30 Gb folder are the ones which have actually been saved by users ( and by Which user ) as I can only see the names of these reports in the following format 42a0bd1a1a5.pdf








[highlight]M.Bajwa

http://www.nextgenlogic.com/bajwa

[/highlight]

 

[GJParker]

do you have a periodic cleanup svheduled ?

Cleanup only applies to reports that are run and not saved, or run and saved to the NewsBox to
which the report was published. The Cleanup action does not delete the output of custom views.

It seems that you are right, a file is created for each run of the report even if the user doesn't save it. If your users have setup custom views then these will never delete.

unfortunately i don't think there is an easy solution to your predicament

I would probably delete everything older than 01/01/2005 or archive to tape if possible.

HTH

Gary Parker
MIS Data Analyst
Manchester, England

 

[mbusa]

thanks for the response.

i am now looking into a script for the periodic cleaning. I guess it would be a batch file that would run monthly and delete all files that are more than a month old.( it would still delete reports that are more than a month old and users have saved them)

Let me know if you have a better solution.

[highlight]M.Bajwa

http://www.nextgenlogic.com/bajwa

[/highlight]

 

[Draoued]

The cleanup process mentioned by GJParker, is , I suppose, the Cleanup task defined by Cognos.
You can define and schedule this task in Impromptu Web Server administration.
Move to the Schedule Folder in the left frame, select the Cleanup task, and define the rythm it should be runned, click OK, that s it.

 

[GJParker]

Draoued is correct, I was asking about the cleanup utility which comes with IWR, this should be scheduled to run on a daily basis.



Gary Parker
MIS Data Analyst
Manchester, England

 

[mbusa]

thanks guys. I have now scheduled the cleanup.
Just for informational purposes. would this cleanup clean all reports that are there or leave the reports that have actually been saved by users ?


[highlight]M.Bajwa

http://www.nextgenlogic.com/bajwa

[/highlight]

 

[GJParker]

The users saved reports are safe, they will not be deleted.



Gary Parker
MIS Data Analyst
Manchester, England

 

[mbusa]

oi just cant stop asking questions.lol

so I was in the schedule window and the other schedule option available was "Collect Audit Data"
Do any of you guys use it ? Is it any good ?
I am guessing it would help to know which users run which reports and what what frequency ? Am I right ?

[highlight]M.Bajwa

http://www.nextgenlogic.com/bajwa

[/highlight]

 

[GJParker]

The audit data can be very useful for monitoring use of reports and analysing user activity. There are standard reports and powerplay cubes available which use this audit data.



Gary Parker
MIS Data Analyst
Manchester, England

 

[mbusa]

I scheduled the audit , where would it dump the info too ?

[highlight]M.Bajwa

http://www.nextgenlogic.com/bajwa

[/highlight]

 

[GJParker]

Before you can collect the data their are a number of steps you require to get this working. Read chapter 9 of teh IWR Administrators guide it will step you through the process.

HTH

Gary Parker
MIS Data Analyst
Manchester, England