Cognos 8 Cubes Information

Web Portals
The IBM Cognos 8 Web portal is IBM Cognos Connection. IBM Cognos Connection replaces
Upfront and the PowerPlay Table of Contents as the portal for accessing PowerPlay reports.

IBM Cognos Administration also allows you to run the Migration Assistant to move your IBM
Cognos Series 7 PowerPlay content to IBM Cognos 8 PowerPlay.

Data Sources

IBM Cognos 8 uses data sources contained in packages. Connections to the data sources are
maintained in IBM Cognos Administration.
For IBM Cognos 8 PowerPlay, a package contains a data source connection to a PowerCube. When you publish a PowerCube, that is, when you create a data source connection to a PowerCube, you can optionally create a package for the cube. PowerPlay users can then build reports from that cube by using the package.

IBM Cognos 8 Transformer allows you to create cubes and to publish them to
IBM Cognos Connection for use in Cognos 8 studios.

All IBM Cognos 8 studio users access data from published packages. PowerPlay accesses data only from packages that use PowerCubes as data sources. Other IBM Cognos 8 studios can access data from packages that use different types of data sources, including PowerCubes.
IBM Cognos 8 PowerPlay Studio and IBM Cognos 8 PowerPlay Client do not support data source
connections to OLAP data sources other than PowerCubes, nor do they support compressed
PowerCubes.

Security

IBM Cognos 8 can use your existing IBM Cognos Series 7 namespace, however, you will need to
continue using IBM Cognos Series 7 Access Manager to administer the namespace.

Security information in your PowerPlay content will be maintained when you migrate to IBM
Cognos 8. Only users and user classes referenced in NewsBoxes and NewsItems being migrated are migrated. Password protected cubes will remain password protected. If you use user class security in your cubes, the security is maintained and you must continue to use your IBM Cognos Series 7 namespace in your IBM Cognos 8 environment.

In IBM Cognos 8 PowerPlay, you cannot access a cube password that is stored in IBM Cognos
Series 7 Access Manager. An administrator must add the cube password to the data source signon when they create the data source connection in IBM Cognos Administration. Also, you cannot open local cubes that are secured against a namespace using IBM Cognos 8 PowerPlay Client. As an alternative, you can use password protected local cubes.

Request Flow

In IBM Cognos Series 7, incoming requests are sent from the gateway to the PowerPlay server and from the PowerPlay server to a query processor. In the default configuration, the query processor sends the response directly to the gateway, bypassing the PowerPlay server. To do this, the gateway listens for connections on a server socket and the query processor opens a socket connection back to the gateway. This requires open outbound ports in firewalls between the Web tier and the Application Tier Components. In IBM Cognos 8, responses always travel back through the same socket connections that the request arrived on. This is the same as enabling the restrict outgoing port configuration option in IBM Cognos Series 7.

The Migration Service

Migration is a service in the IBM Cognos 8 service-oriented architecture. The migration service
migrates PowerPlay content from IBM Cognos Series 7 to IBM Cognos 8 PowerPlay. The migration service also migrates PowerPlay reports to an IBM Cognos 8 report specification when a user opens the report in Report Studio or Analysis Studio.

Note: There are two migration services; one is an IBM Cognos Series 7 service and one is an IBM Cognos 8 service. Both services must be started before you can migrate your content. The IBM Cognos Series 7 Migration service is started from the Windows Services manager or on UNIX using the command ./configure.sh --start. The IBM Cognos 8 migration service is run by the IBM Cognos 8 dispatcher and is automatically started when you start the IBM Cognos 8 service.

Replacing or Updating Cubes

If you are using IBM Cognos 8 Transformer version 8.4, you can update PowerCubes using new
deployment features without having to restart services, disable cubes, or use scripts. If you are using IBM Cognos Series 7 PowerCubes in IBM Cognos 8, you can also take advantage of new deployment features using a utility named pcactivate.