Apple crazy and integrating Business Intelligence on iPad

I read an article recently which said " Apple fan following is like a
religion". The study showed, when the apple fans spoke about the apple
product or a religious person spoke about his religion; the exact
brain cells activated for both of them. Such a strange fact.

         Personally  I have some friends who where anti apple when the
iPod came out. They hated it more when the iPhone came. But guest
what, I was planning to create an apple app but found out that these
guys have already started the ground work. That is how influential the
environment around people can be. People who used to hate it, love it
after actually using it. Another fact, most of my friends you have
photography as an hobby end up buying one of the mac machines and
later buy SLR camera. One more thing, they have all gone to
photography classes also. Crazy guys.

The reason I am writing this blog today is also because of the fact
that I wanted to create a simple app icon on the home screen of a
iphone / ipad that could lead me to my personal website / home page.

I achieved what I wanted. At least The initial steps. I am so glad.By
profession I am a Business intelligence developer, I work on reporting
platform, data warehousing. I have lost touch with the core coding. I
do write simple java based codes or scripting or jsp but not the C++
level.

I designed the template of the IBM COGNOS 8 reports to fit into the
mobile safari. Basically a web based application.  A dynamic icon is
created with the exact report name that you would have created. This
way, the end user is only a touch away from his reports. Cannot
discuss anything else. CONFIDENTIAL. I am working something similar on
my personal website (which is not for commercial usage) and I will try
to put some screen shots.

 Click on the app icon, enter user name password and your report is
ready.  Simple isn't it.

I certainly think this is a great idea to integrate Business
Intelligence and the iPad users in the most cost effective way.

Sent from my iPad :)

FactFinder Internal Error: loop in the join path IBM COGNOS Error

This is an example of poor --- very poor framework management. I was actually working on creating some metadata for a custom report and I had only half day time to test it, The report needed an humongous amount of details from various tables and performance was a major issue.

 I tried creating metadata from existing metadata in the import layer. When I create new relationship for the 2 new tables which I added for this report, there was a loop issue. Of course when you check the query subject on Framework Manager -- Launch Content Explorer; it does not show any loop. So now, I had to create redundant data in the import layer just for this report in order to accommodate the new query subject and avoid loops. Given more time we could have avoided this by re mapping some of old query subject relationships.

Lesson learn :) ---- Avoid joins to the same query subjects in the import layer. Always look at the base query subject and not the derived once in development layer or the second layer of the Framework Manager.

Anyways, I could find the issue fast and it was an easy solution. Way to go !!!!!

COGNOS Error ' Reason: java.io.IOException: DER length more than 4 bytes ' or ' signkeypair\jCAKeystore ' or Generating cryptographic information IBM

End users always play a lot with their machines, they install and uninstall so much stuff. One of our end user actually installed some new softwares on his machine and he played around with the services and config files. This lead to COGNOS down. We tried to restart the services both from back-end and front-end but no use. Usually we used to face this error due to the integrated security login that we have on COGNOS, so I removed the class file on configuration and tried it again. This time, the error was at a higher level --- " Generating cryptographic information "

So I tried this simple solution, :) replacing the configuration files @ location  .....c8\configuration\signkeypair . There are 5 files in all, I copied these files from my local machine and replaced them at the end user's machine. Things started working fine. 

F Y I -- Once COGNOS is installed; replacing any file within COGNOS installed files can be done with out any issues. If in case COGNOS is down but you want to take back up of the content store before re-installing it (the usual solution that IBM COGNOS gives us )... simple copy the entire folder of ...\c8\contentstore  from the server and take a back up. Then uninstall and reinstall the COGNOS. Now replace the Content Store back up folder in the new installation folder. You should be all set to go.

IBM COGNOS 8.4 SQL Server Text field issue

We have been facing this issue where COGNOS does not support BOLB / Text. Due to this, we did update over DB table columns from Text fields to Varchar both in the SQL Server and MySQL. But the problem we are facing is:

8.3 + MySQL = Works fine.

8.4 + MySQL = Works fine.

8.3 + SQL Server = Works fine.

8.4 + SQL Server = Errors Out. Strange isn't it.

Before we changed the DB fields from Text to VarChar; we got this error

RQP-DEF-0177 sqlPrepareWithOptions status = -9

Then, even after coversion of Text to VarChar;

RQP-DEF-0403 Using a blob column in this query requires that the query subject ------- must have either a key or a unique index.

So, we added the indexes and determinants to the DB and everything was set. I wanted to take one more screen shot of the property I changed but will do that later. I am testing more scenarios in different environments; let me do that first before I finalize the solution.

Hands on experience with IBM 10

Loads to explore on IBM 10 especially with all the hype and the ads that they have been showing I was very eager to explore it. It has been only couple of hours since I installed IBM 10 but here are some of the things I found that were interesting.

1. ODBC --- Loads of new ODBC options ex….Netezza – one of their latest acquisition
2. COGNOS Insight should get a top rating, my experience on it has be minimal but I am sure I will get to get a lot on it.
3. New installation (default)path has changed --- in comes IBM -->ibm/cognos/c10
4. Yet to explore report studio which is presently missing or is it in a different manner now. (May be it required a separate installation / package)
5. Lotus Connections software
6. From the internet ---- “Cognos Active Reports, allows Cognos users who find themselves--heaven forbid--disconnected from the network to still consume interactive reports. The product is a tool for developers to create these reports. Large data sets are not supported, but even so, Cognos users have been asking for such a product (already available from Cognos' big-name rivals) for years. “
7. Info about another acquisition --- SPSS ---- “from the internet” renowned statistical engine is now included in the Cognos suite as Cognos Statistics. As an optional and integrated component of the Cognos Report Studio, Cognos Statistics provides analysts with the capability to build reports that contain statistical analysis. No longer must they leave the comfy world of the Report Studio to extract data from the data warehouse, load it into the statistical engine, and then distribute the resulting reports. It can all be done centrally.We would love to have SPSS; but I guess it will cost us more.
8. Small things like --- web colors, web icons

I will get back on this very soon.

IBM COGNOS 8.4 – aggregate currentMeasure within detail error / not totaling properly

One of my friend called me the other day and explained me a situation where the sum of a row wasn’t right. It wasn’t very clear when he initially explained the issue to me and so I asked him to email me a screen shot (the image I have put up here.)
When I first looked at the screen shot, it looked fishy to me but flashed to me instantly that this should be a report studio error and that they would have changed the property of the data item. So I emailed him back with a screen shot of the property column that should be updated
Solution  Change the property of the Summary / Aggregate (Appointment Date)
Aggregate Function --- Calculated
Roll Up Aggregate --- Total
That did the trick !!!!!

What is this UDS? and why a validation tool?

UDS means Uniform Data system. They are basically a core set of information that are required to review the operation and performance of a Health Center. We developed an exception report in order to check whether the reports that we generate are appropriate. Usually the grantees should submit their UDS report by Feb 15 of each year in order to ensure adequate time for review and correction of data errors prior to final submission which is March 31.

For more information please look at http://www.hrsa.gov/data-statistics/health-center-data/index.html#what

I have been working on UDS reporting for the past 2 years. The first year we spent a lot of time in creating the reports and now that is stable, the second year we added drill downs on the reports and updated the report with the changes from UDS committee 2009. Moving forward; the 3rd year 2010, I designed this exception report because most of the issues that we came across in 2009 we based on the work flow, undefined data, improper capturing of data etc.

Will try to put in a example of the exception report idea that we implemented.