A word of caution when it comes to performance with BigInsights

Eventhough IBM BigInsights is a great platform to handle loads of data in different formats, connecting to Hive via IBM Business Intelligence deserves a word of caution.  IBM clearly states the following :

Quote :

The architecture of Hive is better suited for large query processing than handling many light queries because the set up time for a query is significantly higher compared to the most popular RDBMS. Therefore, consider scheduling pre-authored reports when ah-hoc analysis is not absolutely necessary. Scheduling reports in batches will benefit from Cognos Business Intelligence query service's cache management system, minimizing the amount of data that is fetched from BigInsights and significantly reducing report execution times.
If interactivity is required on large volumes of data, consider whether the analysis requirements can be met by scheduling Cognos Active Reports. If ad-hoc analysis is required, educate business users on how to perform multiple operations with a single drag-and-drop gesture. (Modelers should consider adding stand-alone filters and calculations to the package so that multi-click operations to define the filters/calculations can be avoided.)

What to conclude? Ad-Hoc reporting is a big nono.  You shouldn't expect Hive to have blazing performance when reporting on top of it.  That's especially true when there's only a limited amount of nodes serving the data.  Luckily IBM Cognos BI offers a range of possibilities in this respect as mentioned in the article in the URL below.

RSV-VAL-0010 Error Message

Just a quick post today.

RSV-VAL-0010 : This error message is really quite a general error message with which you don't get too much information.  There are some posts on this on the net, but my experience is, it's mostly a query still that's still in the list of query's in your report that still points to metadata that is no longer there.

Especially when using dynamic query mode.

Check those query's!

Configuring a server timezone

In large scale installations that are deployed world-wide, an IBM Cognos configuration might support a topology that supports 1000s of users in different time zones.  There would typically be a lot of dispatchers serving the reports.

But what with schedules for example?  When you schedule some report to be sent as 2 P.M., which time zone is it?  This is something that can be specified as a setting in IBM Cognos Configuration.

Open IBM Cognos Configuration, and from the "actions" menu, click "Edit Global Configuration".  You can find the server time zone in the "General" tab.

Click Save, and restart the dispatchers to apply the setting.





Report Studio Tip : Finding out which object use a certain conditional style

It's often unclear which objects (for instance columns in a list) use a conditional style.  You could go and inspect the property of every single column in every list, but that's quite cumbersome. 

Turns out you can just search for them.  Just go to the "Edit" menu in report studio, and select the "Find" menu item.



In the dialog, just select "Objects with conditional style" in the "Find what" dropdown, and select the desired conditional style in the dropdown below it.  Using the "Find Next" button, you can search for the objects that use that style.




Did you know... you can also start Cognos Configuration for Cognos Express

When installing Cognos Express, most administrative tasks are done using the IBM Cognos Express Manager.  This an online web interface in which you can install modules, create users, but also configure your LDAP & notification settings.

Sometimes, you just want to tweak things some more, and the start menu doesn't allow you to start Cognos Configuration.  If you look carefully, it is shipped with the product, but you just have to start it from the file system.

The executable "cogconfigw.exe" is located in the "bin64" folder of your installation directory.  By running it as an administrator, you'll be able to edit all of the settings you want.


Have fun!

IBM Cognos Insight 10.2.2 is there...

With the advent of the new TM1 version 10.2.2, a new version of IBM Cognos Insight is shipped.  It contains a lot of bugfixes along with a few new features such as


  • support for unbalanced and ragged hierarchies
  • undo / redo
  • conditional formatting
  • ...
check out the full list at the URL below :