Ask: Feature of Reporting Service

Dear All,
Since Reporting Service is part of SQL Server 2000.
Is there any features difference of Reporting Services which is part of
SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition and Reporting Services which is part
of SQL Server 2000?
Thanks
Robert LieThere are indeed differences between the Enterprise and Standard Editions of
Reporting Services. Have a look at the feature comparison at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/productinfo/features.asp
--
HTH
Jasper Smith (SQL Server MVP)
http://www.sqldbatips.com
I support PASS - the definitive, global
community for SQL Server professionals -
http://www.sqlpass.org
<robert.lie24@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1115953206.069272.152450@.z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Dear All,
> Since Reporting Service is part of SQL Server 2000.
> Is there any features difference of Reporting Services which is part of
> SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition and Reporting Services which is part
> of SQL Server 2000?
> Thanks
> Robert Lie
>

Ask for version of Service Pack of SQL Server 2000?

Dear All,
How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
2000?
Thanks
Robert LieTry:
SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel')
--
Hope this helps.
Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP
"Robert Lie" <robert.lie24@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23AVYZ%23EUFHA.2964@.TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Dear All,
> How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
> 2000?
> Thanks
> Robert Lie|||http://www.aspfaq.com/2160
http://www.aspfaq.com/sql2000Builds.asp
--
This is my signature. It is a general reminder.
Please post DDL, sample data and desired results.
See http://www.aspfaq.com/5006 for info.
"Robert Lie" <robert.lie24@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23AVYZ%23EUFHA.2964@.TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Dear All,
> How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
> 2000?
> Thanks
> Robert Lie

Ask for version of Service Pack of SQL Server 2000?

Dear All,
How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
2000?
Thanks
Robert LieTry:
SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel')
Hope this helps.
Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP
"Robert Lie" <robert.lie24@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23AVYZ%23EUFHA.2964@.TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Dear All,
> How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
> 2000?
> Thanks
> Robert Lie|||http://www.aspfaq.com/2160
http://www.aspfaq.com/sql2000Builds.asp
This is my signature. It is a general reminder.
Please post DDL, sample data and desired results.
See http://www.aspfaq.com/5006 for info.
"Robert Lie" <robert.lie24@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23AVYZ%23EUFHA.2964@.TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Dear All,
> How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
> 2000?
> Thanks
> Robert Lie

Ask for version of Service Pack of SQL Server 2000?

Dear All,
How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
2000?
Thanks
Robert Lie
Try:
SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel')
Hope this helps.
Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP
"Robert Lie" <robert.lie24@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23AVYZ%23EUFHA.2964@.TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Dear All,
> How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
> 2000?
> Thanks
> Robert Lie
|||http://www.aspfaq.com/2160
http://www.aspfaq.com/sql2000Builds.asp
This is my signature. It is a general reminder.
Please post DDL, sample data and desired results.
See http://www.aspfaq.com/5006 for info.
"Robert Lie" <robert.lie24@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23AVYZ%23EUFHA.2964@.TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Dear All,
> How do I know the version of SP that has been installed in my SQL Server
> 2000?
> Thanks
> Robert Lie

AS2005 Cognos Power Play 8

Has anyone managed to use Cognos against Analysis Service 2005 cube? If so any help or point of reference welcome!

Thanks

Sutha

Hi Sutha,

No direct experience I'm afraid but I was talking to Allan Mitchell last night (and where were you, eh?) and he mentioned that he'd had Cognos people in to do a PoC on one of his AS2005 cubes and they were unable to get it to work properly either. Drop him a mail and he might be able to fill you in with the details.

Chris

|||

Since I'm also interested in finding out how well Cognos 8 leverages the AS 2005 feature set, I've Googled some relevent yet "only slightly better than nothing yet" findings this morning, and I'm posting summaries and links here...

Cognos Link to 7/11/07 article indicating Cognos 8 Controller 8.2 Software Environments
Updated: July 11, 2007 ... support of AS 2005 SP2, is listed by Cognos as "compatible", meaning partially tested by Cognos and/or tested or asserted by a Cognos Partner (vs. "Active" (fully tested and supported) or "not supported").

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/controller82_software_environments.html

Older Cognos Link to 7/11/2006 article indicating Cognos 8 MR2 does (at least at time of article) [or did] NOT SUPPORT SSAS 2005 cubes. http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html#olap

Request Feedback from Anyone Directly Experienced in Attempting to Connect Cognos 8 with AS2005 Cubes.

As an AS2005 worker (not Cognos), I'm keen to hear how well Cognos' 8's reporting and/or "downstream-from-OLAP" analytics environment can leverage the AS2005 feature set. It's scary not seeing an "Active" (fully tested, Cognos-approved) rating by Cognos in the above link.

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

Hello! I have came across some implementatiions of Cognos on top of SQL Server 2000 and SQL 2005.

My conclusions are:

Cognos work best with its own cubes, read Transformer. The support for AS2000 cubes, last year, did not include named sets, six years after the release of AS2000, The support for SSAS2005 was nonexistent.

Cognos supplies products on top of other suppliers RDBMS products and is very frequently bought by customers that do not know that SQL Server 2005 includes SSAS2005 and SSRS2005. I have seen customers who have bought SQL Server 2005 and wasted money on Cognos 8 on top of that.

|||I don't know if you mean how to use Powerplay against an AS Cube, but this is from a link from cognos support on how to use AS2k5 as a datasource.

I don't have a Cognos Series8 install here to test this with, and it surely didn't work in Series 7 . Not that i was expecting it to..

Title:

How to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2

Document#:

1031921.1

Updated:

Jun 21, 2007

Applies To:

Cognos 8 BI Analysis Studio 8.2 | Cognos 8 BI Cognos Connection 8.1 | Cognos 8 BI Framework Manager 8.2

Cases:

3

Collection:

KB

---

Description:

How to setup Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2 as Data Source

Environment:

Win 2003 Standard Edition/ Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2005 (SP2), Cognos 8.2

Steps:

Run the Cognos 8 service as a Domain Account (ie Cognos_service)
Add (Cognos_service) to SQLServer2005MSOLAPUser$<server_name>$<instance_name> Group on the machine running SQL Server 2005
Add (Cognos_service) to the role for under the database running the Analysis Service Cube
(Open MS Server Managerment Studio > Login to Analysis Services Server > Open the Database running the cube > Create a Role and assign read access to at least one cube inside the database and add (Cognos-service) to the role).
Go to Cognos Connection > Tools > Data Source > New Data Source > Name the Data source > Type ( Analysis Service 2005 ) > Host Name <Enter the host name of SQL Server 2005> > Named Instance <Enter the Instance Name of SQL Server>

{ If you don't have a defined instance leave this field blank. To check the instance name logon to MS Server Management Studio. Expected format

<Host Name>\ <Instance Name> ( MS Analysis Server 9.00.XXX ) - <Host Name>\< user name>.}
Choose the connection Type ( Cognos8 Credentials or External Namespace)
Test the connection.
Finish|||Oh, scratch that, i guess you were looking to use PP, guess i should have read the topic, and not the post
|||

Chris,

Actually, if you were describing how to connect the Cognos reporting environment (with which I'm not familiar) to an AS2005 cube, then that is relevent. I don't currently plan to use a PP cube. Thx.

Of course, just connecting from Cognos does not mean that Cognos really leverages the AS2005 feature set, right? On that note, do you have any feedback on that question?

|||

OK. You're confirming my suspicions, which is helpful. Thanks, Thomas.

However, Cognos' support of AS2005 SP2 was quoted as "compatible" on the Cognos site (link is on my initial post on this thread.

Has anybody at MSDN has seen this alleged Cognos "compatible" support of AS2005 SP2 in action? If so, how did it do?

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

According to this page AS2005 is still not supported:

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html

MSSQL Server Analysis Services 2005

Not Supported

Not Supported

I supect that the support, when it arrives, will be limited for business logic, like named sets, because PP have it own calculation engine for that. Their strategy is to use other suppliers cubes as nothing more than data stores and keep the business logic inside its own products.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

Interesting. So, let's suppose for a moment that Cognos 8's interface has great capabilities to build, on a raw AS2005 cube, with queries, calculated members, named sets, KPI's, by visual interface and/or MDX -- and create dashboards, reports, etc. Finally, let's also assume that no cube transactions or actions are necessary. In this context, what really bad limitations will be encountered by, say a legacy Cognos Team newly implementing AS2005, with doing that biz logic outside of BIDS and Analysis Svcs? Let's also suppose here that no cube translations or actions are necessary.

|||

No limitations except that all your business logic will reside in Cognos and you are unable to use tools from different suppliers. This strategy is almost the same as ProClarity have used except that ProClarity supports business logic in AS2005(MDX scipts) and provide its own tools for that.

And when organizations and business migrate to Office 2007, Excel 2007 will support SSAS2005 features.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

I totally agree with you on that. Thanks very much, Thomas, for the extended dialogue. Very helpful!

Daniel Upton

|||Cognos 8.2 supports AS2005 SP2 and AS2000 as a datasource. I have implemented that at our site. Yes you don't need cognos once you have SQL Server. But sometime politics plays a role.

Best Regards
|||

Hello Jason,

Yes Cognos8 work on SSAS, but performance are very slowly, and nothing to help for this problem, Cognos say look at MS, and Ms don't say nothing.

Why an Excel is 10 time faster than Cognos 8 analysis studio when we are querying an SSAS CUBE?

Customer are nos so happy at end !!!

pascal

|||

Hello Chris.

I use Cognos 8 with SQL2000 cube, and with SQL2005 cube,

the main problems are :

1 - to publish SSAS cube we use Framework Manager and we can't add filters, properties, calculations.

2 - Performance are incredible, i say 10 time slower than Excel or Cube Browser, and we have nothing to help .

3 - Sometime i try to play with Reporting Services, but customer's say "i'ts not standard !"

Any idea to check performance at all levels ?

Merci de Suisse .

AS2005 Cognos Power Play 8

Has anyone managed to use Cognos against Analysis Service 2005 cube? If so any help or point of reference welcome!

Thanks

Sutha

Hi Sutha,

No direct experience I'm afraid but I was talking to Allan Mitchell last night (and where were you, eh?) and he mentioned that he'd had Cognos people in to do a PoC on one of his AS2005 cubes and they were unable to get it to work properly either. Drop him a mail and he might be able to fill you in with the details.

Chris

|||

Since I'm also interested in finding out how well Cognos 8 leverages the AS 2005 feature set, I've Googled some relevent yet "only slightly better than nothing yet" findings this morning, and I'm posting summaries and links here...

Cognos Link to 7/11/07 article indicating Cognos 8 Controller 8.2 Software Environments
Updated: July 11, 2007 ... support of AS 2005 SP2, is listed by Cognos as "compatible", meaning partially tested by Cognos and/or tested or asserted by a Cognos Partner (vs. "Active" (fully tested and supported) or "not supported").

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/controller82_software_environments.html

Older Cognos Link to 7/11/2006 article indicating Cognos 8 MR2 does (at least at time of article) [or did] NOT SUPPORT SSAS 2005 cubes. http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html#olap

Request Feedback from Anyone Directly Experienced in Attempting to Connect Cognos 8 with AS2005 Cubes.

As an AS2005 worker (not Cognos), I'm keen to hear how well Cognos' 8's reporting and/or "downstream-from-OLAP" analytics environment can leverage the AS2005 feature set. It's scary not seeing an "Active" (fully tested, Cognos-approved) rating by Cognos in the above link.

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

Hello! I have came across some implementatiions of Cognos on top of SQL Server 2000 and SQL 2005.

My conclusions are:

Cognos work best with its own cubes, read Transformer. The support for AS2000 cubes, last year, did not include named sets, six years after the release of AS2000, The support for SSAS2005 was nonexistent.

Cognos supplies products on top of other suppliers RDBMS products and is very frequently bought by customers that do not know that SQL Server 2005 includes SSAS2005 and SSRS2005. I have seen customers who have bought SQL Server 2005 and wasted money on Cognos 8 on top of that.

|||I don't know if you mean how to use Powerplay against an AS Cube, but this is from a link from cognos support on how to use AS2k5 as a datasource.

I don't have a Cognos Series8 install here to test this with, and it surely didn't work in Series 7 . Not that i was expecting it to..

Title:

How to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2

Document#:

1031921.1

Updated:

Jun 21, 2007

Applies To:

Cognos 8 BI Analysis Studio 8.2 | Cognos 8 BI Cognos Connection 8.1 | Cognos 8 BI Framework Manager 8.2

Cases:

3

Collection:

KB

---

Description:

How to setup Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2 as Data Source

Environment:

Win 2003 Standard Edition/ Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2005 (SP2), Cognos 8.2

Steps:

Run the Cognos 8 service as a Domain Account (ie Cognos_service)
Add (Cognos_service) to SQLServer2005MSOLAPUser$<server_name>$<instance_name> Group on the machine running SQL Server 2005
Add (Cognos_service) to the role for under the database running the Analysis Service Cube
(Open MS Server Managerment Studio > Login to Analysis Services Server > Open the Database running the cube > Create a Role and assign read access to at least one cube inside the database and add (Cognos-service) to the role).
Go to Cognos Connection > Tools > Data Source > New Data Source > Name the Data source > Type ( Analysis Service 2005 ) > Host Name <Enter the host name of SQL Server 2005> > Named Instance <Enter the Instance Name of SQL Server>

{ If you don't have a defined instance leave this field blank. To check the instance name logon to MS Server Management Studio. Expected format

<Host Name>\ <Instance Name> ( MS Analysis Server 9.00.XXX ) - <Host Name>\< user name>.}
Choose the connection Type ( Cognos8 Credentials or External Namespace)
Test the connection.
Finish|||Oh, scratch that, i guess you were looking to use PP, guess i should have read the topic, and not the post
|||

Chris,

Actually, if you were describing how to connect the Cognos reporting environment (with which I'm not familiar) to an AS2005 cube, then that is relevent. I don't currently plan to use a PP cube. Thx.

Of course, just connecting from Cognos does not mean that Cognos really leverages the AS2005 feature set, right? On that note, do you have any feedback on that question?

|||

OK. You're confirming my suspicions, which is helpful. Thanks, Thomas.

However, Cognos' support of AS2005 SP2 was quoted as "compatible" on the Cognos site (link is on my initial post on this thread.

Has anybody at MSDN has seen this alleged Cognos "compatible" support of AS2005 SP2 in action? If so, how did it do?

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

According to this page AS2005 is still not supported:

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html

MSSQL Server Analysis Services 2005

Not Supported

Not Supported

I supect that the support, when it arrives, will be limited for business logic, like named sets, because PP have it own calculation engine for that. Their strategy is to use other suppliers cubes as nothing more than data stores and keep the business logic inside its own products.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

Interesting. So, let's suppose for a moment that Cognos 8's interface has great capabilities to build, on a raw AS2005 cube, with queries, calculated members, named sets, KPI's, by visual interface and/or MDX -- and create dashboards, reports, etc. Finally, let's also assume that no cube transactions or actions are necessary. In this context, what really bad limitations will be encountered by, say a legacy Cognos Team newly implementing AS2005, with doing that biz logic outside of BIDS and Analysis Svcs? Let's also suppose here that no cube translations or actions are necessary.

|||

No limitations except that all your business logic will reside in Cognos and you are unable to use tools from different suppliers. This strategy is almost the same as ProClarity have used except that ProClarity supports business logic in AS2005(MDX scipts) and provide its own tools for that.

And when organizations and business migrate to Office 2007, Excel 2007 will support SSAS2005 features.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

I totally agree with you on that. Thanks very much, Thomas, for the extended dialogue. Very helpful!

Daniel Upton

|||Cognos 8.2 supports AS2005 SP2 and AS2000 as a datasource. I have implemented that at our site. Yes you don't need cognos once you have SQL Server. But sometime politics plays a role.

Best Regards
|||

Hello Jason,

Yes Cognos8 work on SSAS, but performance are very slowly, and nothing to help for this problem, Cognos say look at MS, and Ms don't say nothing.

Why an Excel is 10 time faster than Cognos 8 analysis studio when we are querying an SSAS CUBE?

Customer are nos so happy at end !!!

pascal

|||

Hello Chris.

I use Cognos 8 with SQL2000 cube, and with SQL2005 cube,

the main problems are :

1 - to publish SSAS cube we use Framework Manager and we can't add filters, properties, calculations.

2 - Performance are incredible, i say 10 time slower than Excel or Cube Browser, and we have nothing to help .

3 - Sometime i try to play with Reporting Services, but customer's say "i'ts not standard !"

Any idea to check performance at all levels ?

Merci de Suisse .

AS2005 Cognos Power Play 8

Has anyone managed to use Cognos against Analysis Service 2005 cube? If so any help or point of reference welcome!

Thanks

Sutha

Hi Sutha,

No direct experience I'm afraid but I was talking to Allan Mitchell last night (and where were you, eh?) and he mentioned that he'd had Cognos people in to do a PoC on one of his AS2005 cubes and they were unable to get it to work properly either. Drop him a mail and he might be able to fill you in with the details.

Chris

|||

Since I'm also interested in finding out how well Cognos 8 leverages the AS 2005 feature set, I've Googled some relevent yet "only slightly better than nothing yet" findings this morning, and I'm posting summaries and links here...

Cognos Link to 7/11/07 article indicating Cognos 8 Controller 8.2 Software Environments
Updated: July 11, 2007 ... support of AS 2005 SP2, is listed by Cognos as "compatible", meaning partially tested by Cognos and/or tested or asserted by a Cognos Partner (vs. "Active" (fully tested and supported) or "not supported").

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/controller82_software_environments.html

Older Cognos Link to 7/11/2006 article indicating Cognos 8 MR2 does (at least at time of article) [or did] NOT SUPPORT SSAS 2005 cubes. http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html#olap

Request Feedback from Anyone Directly Experienced in Attempting to Connect Cognos 8 with AS2005 Cubes.

As an AS2005 worker (not Cognos), I'm keen to hear how well Cognos' 8's reporting and/or "downstream-from-OLAP" analytics environment can leverage the AS2005 feature set. It's scary not seeing an "Active" (fully tested, Cognos-approved) rating by Cognos in the above link.

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

Hello! I have came across some implementatiions of Cognos on top of SQL Server 2000 and SQL 2005.

My conclusions are:

Cognos work best with its own cubes, read Transformer. The support for AS2000 cubes, last year, did not include named sets, six years after the release of AS2000, The support for SSAS2005 was nonexistent.

Cognos supplies products on top of other suppliers RDBMS products and is very frequently bought by customers that do not know that SQL Server 2005 includes SSAS2005 and SSRS2005. I have seen customers who have bought SQL Server 2005 and wasted money on Cognos 8 on top of that.

|||I don't know if you mean how to use Powerplay against an AS Cube, but this is from a link from cognos support on how to use AS2k5 as a datasource.

I don't have a Cognos Series8 install here to test this with, and it surely didn't work in Series 7 . Not that i was expecting it to..

Title:

How to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2

Document#:

1031921.1

Updated:

Jun 21, 2007

Applies To:

Cognos 8 BI Analysis Studio 8.2 | Cognos 8 BI Cognos Connection 8.1 | Cognos 8 BI Framework Manager 8.2

Cases:

3

Collection:

KB

---

Description:

How to setup Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2 as Data Source

Environment:

Win 2003 Standard Edition/ Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2005 (SP2), Cognos 8.2

Steps:

Run the Cognos 8 service as a Domain Account (ie Cognos_service)
Add (Cognos_service) to SQLServer2005MSOLAPUser$<server_name>$<instance_name> Group on the machine running SQL Server 2005
Add (Cognos_service) to the role for under the database running the Analysis Service Cube
(Open MS Server Managerment Studio > Login to Analysis Services Server > Open the Database running the cube > Create a Role and assign read access to at least one cube inside the database and add (Cognos-service) to the role).
Go to Cognos Connection > Tools > Data Source > New Data Source > Name the Data source > Type ( Analysis Service 2005 ) > Host Name <Enter the host name of SQL Server 2005> > Named Instance <Enter the Instance Name of SQL Server>

{ If you don't have a defined instance leave this field blank. To check the instance name logon to MS Server Management Studio. Expected format

<Host Name>\ <Instance Name> ( MS Analysis Server 9.00.XXX ) - <Host Name>\< user name>.}
Choose the connection Type ( Cognos8 Credentials or External Namespace)
Test the connection.
Finish|||Oh, scratch that, i guess you were looking to use PP, guess i should have read the topic, and not the post
|||

Chris,

Actually, if you were describing how to connect the Cognos reporting environment (with which I'm not familiar) to an AS2005 cube, then that is relevent. I don't currently plan to use a PP cube. Thx.

Of course, just connecting from Cognos does not mean that Cognos really leverages the AS2005 feature set, right? On that note, do you have any feedback on that question?

|||

OK. You're confirming my suspicions, which is helpful. Thanks, Thomas.

However, Cognos' support of AS2005 SP2 was quoted as "compatible" on the Cognos site (link is on my initial post on this thread.

Has anybody at MSDN has seen this alleged Cognos "compatible" support of AS2005 SP2 in action? If so, how did it do?

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

According to this page AS2005 is still not supported:

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html

MSSQL Server Analysis Services 2005

Not Supported

Not Supported

I supect that the support, when it arrives, will be limited for business logic, like named sets, because PP have it own calculation engine for that. Their strategy is to use other suppliers cubes as nothing more than data stores and keep the business logic inside its own products.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

Interesting. So, let's suppose for a moment that Cognos 8's interface has great capabilities to build, on a raw AS2005 cube, with queries, calculated members, named sets, KPI's, by visual interface and/or MDX -- and create dashboards, reports, etc. Finally, let's also assume that no cube transactions or actions are necessary. In this context, what really bad limitations will be encountered by, say a legacy Cognos Team newly implementing AS2005, with doing that biz logic outside of BIDS and Analysis Svcs? Let's also suppose here that no cube translations or actions are necessary.

|||

No limitations except that all your business logic will reside in Cognos and you are unable to use tools from different suppliers. This strategy is almost the same as ProClarity have used except that ProClarity supports business logic in AS2005(MDX scipts) and provide its own tools for that.

And when organizations and business migrate to Office 2007, Excel 2007 will support SSAS2005 features.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

I totally agree with you on that. Thanks very much, Thomas, for the extended dialogue. Very helpful!

Daniel Upton

AS2005 Cognos Power Play 8

Has anyone managed to use Cognos against Analysis Service 2005 cube? If so any help or point of reference welcome!

Thanks

Sutha

Hi Sutha,

No direct experience I'm afraid but I was talking to Allan Mitchell last night (and where were you, eh?) and he mentioned that he'd had Cognos people in to do a PoC on one of his AS2005 cubes and they were unable to get it to work properly either. Drop him a mail and he might be able to fill you in with the details.

Chris

|||

Since I'm also interested in finding out how well Cognos 8 leverages the AS 2005 feature set, I've Googled some relevent yet "only slightly better than nothing yet" findings this morning, and I'm posting summaries and links here...

Cognos Link to 7/11/07 article indicating Cognos 8 Controller 8.2 Software Environments
Updated: July 11, 2007 ... support of AS 2005 SP2, is listed by Cognos as "compatible", meaning partially tested by Cognos and/or tested or asserted by a Cognos Partner (vs. "Active" (fully tested and supported) or "not supported").

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/controller82_software_environments.html

Older Cognos Link to 7/11/2006 article indicating Cognos 8 MR2 does (at least at time of article) [or did] NOT SUPPORT SSAS 2005 cubes. http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html#olap

Request Feedback from Anyone Directly Experienced in Attempting to Connect Cognos 8 with AS2005 Cubes.

As an AS2005 worker (not Cognos), I'm keen to hear how well Cognos' 8's reporting and/or "downstream-from-OLAP" analytics environment can leverage the AS2005 feature set. It's scary not seeing an "Active" (fully tested, Cognos-approved) rating by Cognos in the above link.

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

Hello! I have came across some implementatiions of Cognos on top of SQL Server 2000 and SQL 2005.

My conclusions are:

Cognos work best with its own cubes, read Transformer. The support for AS2000 cubes, last year, did not include named sets, six years after the release of AS2000, The support for SSAS2005 was nonexistent.

Cognos supplies products on top of other suppliers RDBMS products and is very frequently bought by customers that do not know that SQL Server 2005 includes SSAS2005 and SSRS2005. I have seen customers who have bought SQL Server 2005 and wasted money on Cognos 8 on top of that.

|||I don't know if you mean how to use Powerplay against an AS Cube, but this is from a link from cognos support on how to use AS2k5 as a datasource.

I don't have a Cognos Series8 install here to test this with, and it surely didn't work in Series 7 . Not that i was expecting it to..

Title:

How to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2

Document#:

1031921.1

Updated:

Jun 21, 2007

Applies To:

Cognos 8 BI Analysis Studio 8.2 | Cognos 8 BI Cognos Connection 8.1 | Cognos 8 BI Framework Manager 8.2

Cases:

3

Collection:

KB

---

Description:

How to setup Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2 as Data Source

Environment:

Win 2003 Standard Edition/ Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2005 (SP2), Cognos 8.2

Steps:

Run the Cognos 8 service as a Domain Account (ie Cognos_service)
Add (Cognos_service) to SQLServer2005MSOLAPUser$<server_name>$<instance_name> Group on the machine running SQL Server 2005
Add (Cognos_service) to the role for under the database running the Analysis Service Cube
(Open MS Server Managerment Studio > Login to Analysis Services Server > Open the Database running the cube > Create a Role and assign read access to at least one cube inside the database and add (Cognos-service) to the role).
Go to Cognos Connection > Tools > Data Source > New Data Source > Name the Data source > Type ( Analysis Service 2005 ) > Host Name <Enter the host name of SQL Server 2005> > Named Instance <Enter the Instance Name of SQL Server>

{ If you don't have a defined instance leave this field blank. To check the instance name logon to MS Server Management Studio. Expected format

<Host Name>\ <Instance Name> ( MS Analysis Server 9.00.XXX ) - <Host Name>\< user name>.}
Choose the connection Type ( Cognos8 Credentials or External Namespace)
Test the connection.
Finish|||Oh, scratch that, i guess you were looking to use PP, guess i should have read the topic, and not the post
|||

Chris,

Actually, if you were describing how to connect the Cognos reporting environment (with which I'm not familiar) to an AS2005 cube, then that is relevent. I don't currently plan to use a PP cube. Thx.

Of course, just connecting from Cognos does not mean that Cognos really leverages the AS2005 feature set, right? On that note, do you have any feedback on that question?

|||

OK. You're confirming my suspicions, which is helpful. Thanks, Thomas.

However, Cognos' support of AS2005 SP2 was quoted as "compatible" on the Cognos site (link is on my initial post on this thread.

Has anybody at MSDN has seen this alleged Cognos "compatible" support of AS2005 SP2 in action? If so, how did it do?

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

According to this page AS2005 is still not supported:

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html

MSSQL Server Analysis Services 2005

Not Supported

Not Supported

I supect that the support, when it arrives, will be limited for business logic, like named sets, because PP have it own calculation engine for that. Their strategy is to use other suppliers cubes as nothing more than data stores and keep the business logic inside its own products.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

Interesting. So, let's suppose for a moment that Cognos 8's interface has great capabilities to build, on a raw AS2005 cube, with queries, calculated members, named sets, KPI's, by visual interface and/or MDX -- and create dashboards, reports, etc. Finally, let's also assume that no cube transactions or actions are necessary. In this context, what really bad limitations will be encountered by, say a legacy Cognos Team newly implementing AS2005, with doing that biz logic outside of BIDS and Analysis Svcs? Let's also suppose here that no cube translations or actions are necessary.

|||

No limitations except that all your business logic will reside in Cognos and you are unable to use tools from different suppliers. This strategy is almost the same as ProClarity have used except that ProClarity supports business logic in AS2005(MDX scipts) and provide its own tools for that.

And when organizations and business migrate to Office 2007, Excel 2007 will support SSAS2005 features.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

I totally agree with you on that. Thanks very much, Thomas, for the extended dialogue. Very helpful!

Daniel Upton

|||Cognos 8.2 supports AS2005 SP2 and AS2000 as a datasource. I have implemented that at our site. Yes you don't need cognos once you have SQL Server. But sometime politics plays a role.

Best Regards
|||

Hello Jason,

Yes Cognos8 work on SSAS, but performance are very slowly, and nothing to help for this problem, Cognos say look at MS, and Ms don't say nothing.

Why an Excel is 10 time faster than Cognos 8 analysis studio when we are querying an SSAS CUBE?

Customer are nos so happy at end !!!

pascal

|||

Hello Chris.

I use Cognos 8 with SQL2000 cube, and with SQL2005 cube,

the main problems are :

1 - to publish SSAS cube we use Framework Manager and we can't add filters, properties, calculations.

2 - Performance are incredible, i say 10 time slower than Excel or Cube Browser, and we have nothing to help .

3 - Sometime i try to play with Reporting Services, but customer's say "i'ts not standard !"

Any idea to check performance at all levels ?

Merci de Suisse .

AS2005 Cognos Power Play 8

Has anyone managed to use Cognos against Analysis Service 2005 cube? If so any help or point of reference welcome!

Thanks

Sutha

Hi Sutha,

No direct experience I'm afraid but I was talking to Allan Mitchell last night (and where were you, eh?) and he mentioned that he'd had Cognos people in to do a PoC on one of his AS2005 cubes and they were unable to get it to work properly either. Drop him a mail and he might be able to fill you in with the details.

Chris

|||

Since I'm also interested in finding out how well Cognos 8 leverages the AS 2005 feature set, I've Googled some relevent yet "only slightly better than nothing yet" findings this morning, and I'm posting summaries and links here...

Cognos Link to 7/11/07 article indicating Cognos 8 Controller 8.2 Software Environments
Updated: July 11, 2007 ... support of AS 2005 SP2, is listed by Cognos as "compatible", meaning partially tested by Cognos and/or tested or asserted by a Cognos Partner (vs. "Active" (fully tested and supported) or "not supported").

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/controller82_software_environments.html

Older Cognos Link to 7/11/2006 article indicating Cognos 8 MR2 does (at least at time of article) [or did] NOT SUPPORT SSAS 2005 cubes. http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html#olap

Request Feedback from Anyone Directly Experienced in Attempting to Connect Cognos 8 with AS2005 Cubes.

As an AS2005 worker (not Cognos), I'm keen to hear how well Cognos' 8's reporting and/or "downstream-from-OLAP" analytics environment can leverage the AS2005 feature set. It's scary not seeing an "Active" (fully tested, Cognos-approved) rating by Cognos in the above link.

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

Hello! I have came across some implementatiions of Cognos on top of SQL Server 2000 and SQL 2005.

My conclusions are:

Cognos work best with its own cubes, read Transformer. The support for AS2000 cubes, last year, did not include named sets, six years after the release of AS2000, The support for SSAS2005 was nonexistent.

Cognos supplies products on top of other suppliers RDBMS products and is very frequently bought by customers that do not know that SQL Server 2005 includes SSAS2005 and SSRS2005. I have seen customers who have bought SQL Server 2005 and wasted money on Cognos 8 on top of that.

|||I don't know if you mean how to use Powerplay against an AS Cube, but this is from a link from cognos support on how to use AS2k5 as a datasource.

I don't have a Cognos Series8 install here to test this with, and it surely didn't work in Series 7 . Not that i was expecting it to..

Title:

How to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2

Document#:

1031921.1

Updated:

Jun 21, 2007

Applies To:

Cognos 8 BI Analysis Studio 8.2 | Cognos 8 BI Cognos Connection 8.1 | Cognos 8 BI Framework Manager 8.2

Cases:

3

Collection:

KB

---

Description:

How to setup Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Cubes in Cognos 8.2 as Data Source

Environment:

Win 2003 Standard Edition/ Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2005 (SP2), Cognos 8.2

Steps:

Run the Cognos 8 service as a Domain Account (ie Cognos_service)
Add (Cognos_service) to SQLServer2005MSOLAPUser$<server_name>$<instance_name> Group on the machine running SQL Server 2005
Add (Cognos_service) to the role for under the database running the Analysis Service Cube
(Open MS Server Managerment Studio > Login to Analysis Services Server > Open the Database running the cube > Create a Role and assign read access to at least one cube inside the database and add (Cognos-service) to the role).
Go to Cognos Connection > Tools > Data Source > New Data Source > Name the Data source > Type ( Analysis Service 2005 ) > Host Name <Enter the host name of SQL Server 2005> > Named Instance <Enter the Instance Name of SQL Server>

{ If you don't have a defined instance leave this field blank. To check the instance name logon to MS Server Management Studio. Expected format

<Host Name>\ <Instance Name> ( MS Analysis Server 9.00.XXX ) - <Host Name>\< user name>.}
Choose the connection Type ( Cognos8 Credentials or External Namespace)
Test the connection.
Finish|||Oh, scratch that, i guess you were looking to use PP, guess i should have read the topic, and not the post
|||

Chris,

Actually, if you were describing how to connect the Cognos reporting environment (with which I'm not familiar) to an AS2005 cube, then that is relevent. I don't currently plan to use a PP cube. Thx.

Of course, just connecting from Cognos does not mean that Cognos really leverages the AS2005 feature set, right? On that note, do you have any feedback on that question?

|||

OK. You're confirming my suspicions, which is helpful. Thanks, Thomas.

However, Cognos' support of AS2005 SP2 was quoted as "compatible" on the Cognos site (link is on my initial post on this thread.

Has anybody at MSDN has seen this alleged Cognos "compatible" support of AS2005 SP2 in action? If so, how did it do?

Daniel Upton

www.decisionlab.net

|||

According to this page AS2005 is still not supported:

http://support.cognos.com/en/support/products/cognos8mr2_software_environments.html

MSSQL Server Analysis Services 2005

Not Supported

Not Supported

I supect that the support, when it arrives, will be limited for business logic, like named sets, because PP have it own calculation engine for that. Their strategy is to use other suppliers cubes as nothing more than data stores and keep the business logic inside its own products.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

Interesting. So, let's suppose for a moment that Cognos 8's interface has great capabilities to build, on a raw AS2005 cube, with queries, calculated members, named sets, KPI's, by visual interface and/or MDX -- and create dashboards, reports, etc. Finally, let's also assume that no cube transactions or actions are necessary. In this context, what really bad limitations will be encountered by, say a legacy Cognos Team newly implementing AS2005, with doing that biz logic outside of BIDS and Analysis Svcs? Let's also suppose here that no cube translations or actions are necessary.

|||

No limitations except that all your business logic will reside in Cognos and you are unable to use tools from different suppliers. This strategy is almost the same as ProClarity have used except that ProClarity supports business logic in AS2005(MDX scipts) and provide its own tools for that.

And when organizations and business migrate to Office 2007, Excel 2007 will support SSAS2005 features.

Regards

Thomas Ivarsson

|||

I totally agree with you on that. Thanks very much, Thomas, for the extended dialogue. Very helpful!

Daniel Upton

|||Cognos 8.2 supports AS2005 SP2 and AS2000 as a datasource. I have implemented that at our site. Yes you don't need cognos once you have SQL Server. But sometime politics plays a role.

Best Regards
|||

Hello Jason,

Yes Cognos8 work on SSAS, but performance are very slowly, and nothing to help for this problem, Cognos say look at MS, and Ms don't say nothing.

Why an Excel is 10 time faster than Cognos 8 analysis studio when we are querying an SSAS CUBE?

Customer are nos so happy at end !!!

pascal

|||

Hello Chris.

I use Cognos 8 with SQL2000 cube, and with SQL2005 cube,

the main problems are :

1 - to publish SSAS cube we use Framework Manager and we can't add filters, properties, calculations.

2 - Performance are incredible, i say 10 time slower than Excel or Cube Browser, and we have nothing to help .

3 - Sometime i try to play with Reporting Services, but customer's say "i'ts not standard !"

Any idea to check performance at all levels ?

Merci de Suisse .

AS service hangs on cube build 'start'/ timeout on process cube

I apologize in advance for the duplication, I just found this forum and wanted to post my questions/concerns here. I had previously posted to the discussion group. If anyone has any advice, I would love to hear from you. We are struggling with performance issues, particularly with making changes to the cubes now that our warehouse has grown.

Thank you in advance,

~Shari

We have two apparent issues with Analysis Services (AS) as outlined below:

1. We have a rebuild of the nightly cube build and quite often the first step would hang (just run without processing).We would have to stop the job, restart Analysis Services and then start the job again, resulting in loss of processing time and an impact to our Production Reporting.As a workaround for this intermittent problem, we have adjusted the nightly job to include a stop and start of AS before the cube build begins.An outline of the current steps:

· net stop MSSQLServerOLAPService

· net start MSSQLServerOLAPService

· dtexec /DTS "\MSDB\SSAS_Full_Dim_Load_Prod" /SERVER serverName /MAXCONCURRENT " -1 " /CHECKPOINTING OFF/REPORTING V

· process cub files

· backup cube

We need to know why AS does not process cubes as it should from time to time.Do we have a configuration problem?Is our Production Server not sufficient enough for AS and the size of the cube?We have more than the minimum requirements but possibly we need more due to our expectation of the cubes and data.

Server Specifications à

Production

CPU = Quad 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon (Hyper-Threaded)

Memory = 20476 MB

OS – Windows 2003. SP1

SQL Server 2005

64 bit based on the x64 platform

2. We have been unable to deploy a copy of the Production cubes to a new server.We even tried deploying a smaller cube, to include a large dimension (ex: Account). We continually experience time outs with the larger dimensions.

a. Tried deploying from Visual Studio 2005

b. Attempted to Process the cube through SQL Server Management Studio

c. Attempted to Process the larger dimension only from SQL Server Management Studio

d. Attempted Parallel processing, Sequential – One Transaction, and Sequential – Separate Transaction.

e. Also tried changing the default timeout for the AS server.ForceCommitTimeout property was 30000, increased to 40000 and then again to 50000

f. Attempted to change the ExternalCommandTimeout property from 3600 to 7200. This was successful in the Disaster Recovery server which has nothing running (no users reporting).Although it did take over 5 hours to process.At that rate, it might take 2 days to rebuild the large cube that we have, with several partitions.

Disaster Recovery

CPU = Dual 3.00 GHz Intel Xeon MP (Hyper-Threaded)

Memory = 9728 MB

OS – Windows 2003 SP 1

SQL Server 2005

32bit

Errors -->

OLE DB error: OLE DB or ODBC error: Operation canceled; HY008.

OLE DB error: OLE DB or ODBC error: Query timeout expired; HYT00.

Re: 1

I've seen a scenario where the service "pauses" while processing due to threading issues. When that happens, issuing an unrelated query on another session while processing is stalled can cause the processing job to resume. If you're seeing that behavior, there are some tuning parameters that might help. They're not settings I'd encourage randomly tweaking, though, so I'll hold off on making any recommendations until I hear back.

Re: 2

There are a lot of possible variables here, and the investigation might need to ge tpretty involved. I'd really recommend opening a support ticket to try to resolve that one.

|||

Brad,

Thanks for your post. We have not seen that an unrelated query will trigger processing, per se. Basically once it hangs, it hangs until it is forced to stop. And unfortunately our cube jobs run for about 4-5 hours at night and what might appear to be "processing" is really a hang and it is not realized until we come in the next morning and see that it is not finished yet. The drag is that we lost a process of that cube. As I mentioned, we have put a stop and start of the AS service in the job as a safety but I we feel like we shouldn't have to do this and are more interested in getting the parameters tuned so that AS runs without incident.

As for the second issue, yes my next step is a case with MS. I thought I would post here and see if I could hear from others who may have experienced similiar first.

Thanks again,

Shari

|||

When you say it hangs, I assume you're seeing no CPU consumption or I/O, correct? Could you tell me what the query pool and processing pool busy and idle threads numbers are (under MSAS 2005: Threads in perfmon)?

Also, you say the CPUs support hyperthreading. Is HT actually enabled, such that it looks like 8 CPUs? I ask because it affects the size of the thread pools.

- Brad

ArgumentNullException thrown after second connection

Hi,

Our application has two parts: one is Windows application and the other

one is Windows service. The service runs under Local system accont. We

use third party application to log into database which uses instance of

SQL Server 2005 Express . We use same methods for logging for Windows

application and for Windows service. Both, application and the service

are compiled with .Net framework 2.0 and VS 2005 (C#).

The application always logs into the database succesfuly. The problem

is with the service. The code for the service works like this: first

login into database to retrieve some data, after that log off and

disconnect, and after that immediately tries to login again using the

the same credentials. The first login is always succesful, but the

second one fails with error message:

Type:System.ArgumentNullException

Message:Value cannot be null.

Parameter name: Value is

null.

If we set the Service to run under User windows

account - everything works fine. Does anyone have similar

problems? What can be the problem here? Can anyone help me?

Thanks.

Could you provide the code that is causing the problem and identify the line that thows the exception?

Mike

|||The code is below. The same code works fine for the windows application

and when service connects for the first time. Database path, user name

and password are the same. The code crashes when Windows service tries

to connect for the second time (after LogOff) on line framework.LogOn( sDatabaseFullPath, sUserName, sUserPassword ) and it throws Exception:

Type:System.ArgumentNullException

Message:Value cannot be null.

Parameter name: Value is

null.

Parameters are not null, not even empty string. They contain valid string values (I checked with the debugger).

Framework is namespace from the third party application SDK. I

contacted this third party support also, but they didn't try to help me.

Please note that this code was working fine with .Net framework 1.1, VS 2003 and SQL Server 2000 DE.

public override void LogOn( DBCredentials dbCredentials

)

{

string sDatabaseFullPath =

dbCredentials.DBFileNameFullPath;

string sUserName =

dbCredentials.UserName;

string sUserPassword =

dbCredentials.Password;

try

{

if( IsConnectionLive

)

framework.LogOff();

framework.LogOn(sDatabaseFullPath, sUserName,

sUserPassword);

}

catch( InvalidLogonException

ile )

{

throw new InvalidLogonException(

ile.Message, dbCredentials);

}

catch( ThreadAbortException

ex )

{

throw

ex;

}

catch( LockDatabaseException lde )

{

throw new LockDatabaseException(

lde.Message );

}

catch( Exception

ex)

{

throw new Exception(

ex.Message );

}

}

|||

I don't know anything about this framework namespace or what happens when you call framework.LogOn so it's tough to give you any advice. If you can look at the code in framework, that would be a place to start, if you can't, you'll likely need to push back on the vendor that sold you this framework as this seems to be a problem with their code. There is likely something within framework that is causing the ArgumentNullException and it is just bubbling up.

As a troubleshooting measure, you could try creating your own LogOff and LogOn procedures and use them in your service. You need to try and isolate the "black box" and ensure that SQL Server is working correctly and that the action you are trying to perform is working without the call to framework.

Mike

|||Thanks.