Content Store Survival Guide

REVISED EDITION
CONTENT STORE
SURVIVAL GUIDE
THE COMPLETE MANUAL
TO SURVIVE AND MANAGE THE
IBM COGNOS CONTENT STORE
CONTENT STORE SURVIVAL GUIDE™ 2 of 24
Table of Contents
INTRODUC TION
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3
In the IBM Cognos world
nothing is more shrouded in
THE ROLE OF THE IBM COGNOS STORE 4 mystery than the Content
Store. While every Cognos
CONTENT STORE TABLE STRUCTURE AND ACCESS 6
administrator knows its
importance to the Business
Intelligence (BI) environment,
TOP 10 KEY METRICS FOR CONTENT STORE few completely understand its
ADMINISTRATION 8 role in the BI delivery process.
The least understood aspect of

MANAGING CONTENT STORE GROWTH 12 the Content Store is that it
must be managed if the BI
environment is going to
MANAGING MULTIPLE CONTENT STORES 14 perform well and remain
healthy over time. This survival
CONSOLIDATING AND MERGING COGNOS BI guide provides working
18 knowledge about the IBM
ENVIRONMENTS
Cognos Content Store and its
management.
BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPLEMENTING IBM 21
COGNOS BI SECURITY
All trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. ©2014 Envisn Information Solutions. All rights reserved.
Executive Summary
The IBM Cognos Content Store acts as a need to manage and what best practices might be
appropriate for your environment.
repository for both metadata and content for the BI
environment.
So what are the keys to successfully
Managing it presents challenges particularly as the managing the Content Store over
environment evolves over time and through different stages time?
of growth. Administrators must develop and pay attention to
key metrics of each Content Store and successfully manage The most obvious ones are:
them. As the Cognos environment grows complexity
increases and administration becomes more of a challenge, Effective user training. The BI user community must be
and while the magnitude of problems does not always scale trained on how to effectively utilize the IBM Cognos BI tools
along with size, it does often enough to cause real pain and and best practices.
sometimes disastrous results.
Administrators need to track and manage key metrics
The lack of tools can contribute to administration issues. Off- that relate to their user base and the Content Store.
the-shelf solutions are available to address this and can
greatly aid in administering the Content Store. In addition, The use of effective tools by the administrators to:
there are several key metrics that, when tracked
appropriately, decrease the administration effort including • Instant access to key information
that of growth control. The consistent use of best practices • Manage change – lifecycle management
reduces much of the risk of administering and managing • Manage content
Content Store environments primarily because when problem
• Identify and address key issues
issues are addressed early their impact can be reduced or
• Manage security
eliminated. This survival guide will help you identify what you
The Role of the IBM Cognos Content Store
At a recent IBM Cognos session focused on the Content Store, over 100 attendees were
polled to determine the level of familiarity with the Content Store. Less than 1 in 5 had any
working knowledge of how the Content Store functions or the amount of content it
contained. This is not a surprise since for most users the Content Store is simply a part of
the Cognos environment.
The Cognos Content Store has two essential roles:

1. A repository for Cognos BI metadata.
2. A storehouse for user output.
It’s important to note that it functions less well in its second role as a
storehouse for users output.
The Content Store is dynamic. New objects are added and objects are
deleted and changed on a daily basis. An object like a report has multiple
attributes and each of these can have levels of sub-attributes relating to
things like jobs, schedules, triggers, etc. All of these attributes are likely to
be important at one time or another. Know which reports have triggers and
the name of the trigger can be important to know if reports are not
executing on a timely basis.
Figure 1: Content Store Roles
The Content Store performs extremely well for what it is are no IBM Cognos tools for managing or monitoring
designed for: High speed reporting. However, it does not metadata such as dependencies and relationships on a large
provide administrators with many tools to effectively manage scale. It is also difficult to find and use information to easily
the Cognos BI environment on a day to day basis. assess the impact of database changes on reports, queries, or
packages. In addition, there are many other activities that
must be addressed by Cognos administrators, authors, or
developers.
The following information can be difficult to obtain without
specialized tools:
Size of the Content Store

Make-up of object mix There are basically two ways to
Amount of saved output address this issue:
Rate of growth
Areas of growth
1. Build a solution in-house.
Diagnostics of problem areas
2. Consider an off-the-shelf solution
like NetVisn
Unfortunately, for many Cognos
administrators the lack of tools to get - Option 2 may be the only practical way to provide the
necessary tools to administrators if the financial resources are
basic information like this can go available. Option 1 requires time, resources, and gets messy over
unrecognized until problems occur. time when new versions of Cognos BI are released.
While some of this can be retrieved with individual queries
into the Content Store, it is an inefficient process to use. There
Content Store Table Structure and Access
The metadata in the Content Store is organized in a set of database tables. At last count there were approximately
200 of these. The tables are created when the Cognos Configuration Manager is implemented for the first time. As
users are added to the environment and more content is created the Content Store begins to grow in size. Without any
rules on saved output retention or active archiving the output portion of the Content Store will typically grow much
faster than the metadata portion of the content.
This often goes unnoticed until a problem

occurs. As mentioned in the previous
section, there are no simple or convenient
processes to retrieve basic metrics for size,
item count, speed of growth and others.
Direct queries into the Cognos Content
Store can retrieve this information but this
can be tedious and time consuming.
Figure 2:
Saved Output Growth Over Time
How large is a typical Content Store? In order to see meaningful trends, the user would have
to perform these steps on a regular basis and then build
It depends on the age of the environment, user population, a basic data repository to monitor the information over
number of objects stored, and many more variables. For time. While this approach will work it provides only
example, a Cognos environment of 800 to 1,000 users that limited information and no ability to drill down on the
has been in place for a year or two may have 12,000 to data. Determining why and where the trends are
20,000 objects or more. Each of these objects can have occurring adds another level of complexity.
multiple (20+) properties that relate to security, schedules,
jobs, and other properties, increasing the level of While there are other ways to directly query these tables
complexity. A basic tool to get data out of the Content Store for the occasional data need, building ad hoc tools for
is adequate but to address issues such as dependencies, this may have only limited success:
relationships, permissions, and changes a more systematic
approach is needed.
The Content Manager Browser Tool is available for IBM Cognos reserves the right to change these
download on the IBM Cognos web site and can be used by tables and their structure at any time. Query
administrators to access this information. routines or applications may be incompatible with
new versions.
This tool provides some basic, though limited, capabilities:
IBM Cognos recommends using their SDK
Summary of the number and size of the various objects Validation Tool for systematic access to the
in a simple display format. Content Store.
Ability to query folders and types of objects. A robust third party solution is a better
alternative for broad and deep BI administration
needs.
Top 10 Key Metrics

for Content Store Administration
1. SIZE
Managing the Cognos Content Store starts with
knowing what’s in it, how large it is, how fast it’s Unimportant as a single metric.
growing, and where the growth is taking place.
The metrics discussed here may not be Best used in conjunction with other metrics.
appropriate for all environments. But it is a
place to start the process of managing the
Content Store in a way that’s aligned with the BI
strategy and plans. 2. RATE OF GROWTH
These are the key metrics that administrators Track in terms of number of objects as well
should monitor in terms of production of the as saved output.
Cognos Content Store. Many can directly
impact overall performance and user More critical in environments that are large
satisfaction. and/or growing rapidly.
Can be a key indicator of real or potential

problems in the Content Store.
Tracking growth should be done at least

monthly.
3. NUMBER OF OBJECTS BY TYPE

Useful metric for determining the mix of metadata
objects.
It’s helpful to track the relationship between the

number of reports and queries relative to the number
of packages or models over time.
Best Practice: Create specific packages for individual

areas such as sales, logistics, and marketing instead of
relying on one or two very large packages for
everything.
Example: Figure 3 shows an object count summary by

type for a sample Production Content Store.
Figure 3:
Object Count Summary
4. SAVED OUTPUT
Amount of saved output in mid size or large
environments can dwarf metadata object file size
unless retention rules or output
archiving is in place.
Users may be saving output from

very large reports over time.
Best Practice - Set retention rules

and archive saved output.
Example: Figure 4 is showing

significant growth in saved output
relative to metadata objects over an
eight year period – this is a typical
example.
5. EXCESSIVE REPORT
CREATION
Indicates users may not understand
bursting or prompts. Figure 4: Saved Output Detail
6. VERSION CREEP Best practice - Purging public folders of unused content

makes searches easier and improves Content Store
Keeping versions of models, packages, or other objects performance.
far beyond the needed time period can result in poor
performance. Unused user licenses can be reassigned to new users.
Models and packages can be huge – keeping unneeded 9. OBJECTS WITH BROKEN LINEAGE
versions of them can negatively impact content store
performance. Lineage breaks occur when a package is modified and
published without consideration for reports or queries
Best Practice - Turn off versioning unless you really using it.
need it.
Lineage breaks also occur when a data item(s) no longer
7. MISSING OBJECTS exists.
Can result in a null response when users attempt to run At any given time the percentage of objects with
or receive a scheduled report. broken lineage in a typical production Content Store is
10% to 15%.
Examples:
Identification and resolution of objects with broken
• User creates a view of a report but report is somehow deleted.
lineage before users are impacted reduces calls to the
• Distribution list mistakenly deleted and the users do not
receive reports. help desk and the number of frustrated users.
8. UNUSED OBJECTS 10. DUPLICATE OBJECTS

Track usage of both content and users across the Identifying two or more copies of the same object across
Cognos environment. the environment may indicate a need for better user
training.
Content that has not been used for a period of time (2 –
3 months or more) should be a candidate for removal.
Managing Content Store Growth
In the years that IBM Cognos 8 and 10 cases this reflects the fact that the A large Content Store in and of itself is
have been available there have been a standard reports may have been poorly not necessarily cause for alarm. But size
number of trends underway in terms of designed but it can also reflect users can become a problem when it begins to
how it is used. The most interesting one creating detail, specific reports to meet affect performance. For example, a user
is the dramatic increase in the amount of their own job needs. backs up a very large model each week
overall content in the Cognos to a different file location thinking he’s
environment and the accompanying User driven content creation can be a doing the right thing. It soon has a
increase in the size of the Content Store. blessing and a curse. Some noticeable impact on overall
It is not uncommon to see Content environments have found that user performance. If users do not understand
Stores today that are well over 500 Gb in created reports can have the potential the impact of doing similar things, the
size. for much broader usage than a single Content Store is going to grow but in a
user and often turn them into public way that negatively impacts users
Causes of Dramatic reports on a regular basis. But there are performance. Growth should be organic
also users who create multiple reports,
Growth often similar to public reports, and then
as the result of new users and new
content focused on real user needs.
The evolution to Cognos 10 has resulted schedule all of them to run on a regular
in the perfect balance between basis and then save the output. This can
standardized, functional reporting and create real problems in terms of large
ad hoc individual reports that users increases in the size of the Content Store
create for themselves. But some over time especially as it relates to
environments have seen an explosion of performance.
My Folders content far beyond what
could have ever been predicted. In some
Controlling Growth Set and enforce retention policies
Here are specific practices to keep growth manageable: • Set rules on saved output retention, both amount/size
and length of time.
Monitor Content Store growth on a regular basis using •Obtain user input before setting rules to balance needs
the IBM Cognos utility or a product like NetVisn that will across the user base.
provide broad insight into causes of growth.
Archive content that must be retained.
Training Users - with emphasis on best practices.
Effectively done, this is the single most important thing Delete orphan content
you can do.
• In any large environment users are being added and
Administrators and modelers need to know how deleted on a daily basis.
growth issues can occur.
• Ensure that content from deleted users is
•Example: inadvertently or intentionally turning on also deleted
package versioning on large models.
Managing Multiple Content Stores

Multiple Content Stores also have a role in the typical IBM and a development environment where development also
Cognos Business Intelligence installation. There are serves as the test environment.
similarities and differences between store types and usage
depending on the organization. A Cognos installation may be just a single production
environment. In this case both development and testing co-
As customers move to take advantage of what’s new in exist with production in a single environment. It should be
Cognos 10, the role of the Content Store is even more critical. noted that this is a high risk practice and not recommended.
It has more capabilities and more users relying on it. Most Content that has a different purpose at a given point in time
Cognos installations will typically have three distinct should be in a different environment. Using a single
environments: environment for multiple activities significantly increases the
likelihood of problems with security, data sources, and more.
Production: Deliver BI content to end users.
Test or QA or Pre-Production: Validate the functional

Best Practices
readiness of new or changed content. There are some themes that run through the best practices of
all Content Store environments:
Development: Develop new content or modify
existing content. Clearly defined policies and procedures in place.
Some installations may have additional environments in the Defined data sets for each Content Store.
BI delivery chain; some fewer. A sandbox environment, for
example, is often a good place to just test things without Security profiles for each environment are in place.
impacting user focused environments. And in small to mid-
size installations it is not uncommon to see only a production Readiness rules defined and in place for content
movement.
Deployment history of all content moved from one Production Best Practices:
environment to the next. This needs to be a complete
record of what transpired.(who, what, when, etc.) Organize content for easy user access
Tools should be available and enable administrators to Limit folder depth and number of clicks required for
work both in and across all environments content access.
simultaneously. Clearly label content – makes it easier to find & reduces
redundant reports.
Monitoring of key metrics:
Create a clean structure for easy navigation.
• May differ from one installation to another
Develop criteria for production ready content.
• Must include:
Create rules for managing My Folders.
• Usage by content and users
• Growth in content and users Mandate and routinely test backup and recovery
procedures.
Manage and validate security in real-time.
Validate data sources on an on-going basis.
Production Content Store
Monitor content and user usage on an on-going basis.
In a production environment there is no room for error. When
there are hundreds or thousands of users there must be Remove unused content and excess output.
policies and procedures in place which control working in the
Archive saved output.
production environment.
Have tools in place for administering the environment.
Implement schedules, triggers, distribution lists, etc.
No development takes place in production.
Test or Pre-Production Content Store items moved to production (including who-what-

when). See Figure 5.
Best Practices:
Practice content version control.
The Test or Pre-production environment is similar to
production but there are differences. Make change management a major focus.
Security should represent the production environment. Mandate and routinely test backup and recovery
procedures.
Use active rather than static data sources.
Track usage (is the content really being tested as it
Ability to compare to production environment for:
should be?)
•Security
•Metadata
•Data sources
•Content counts (deleting old
or unneeded test content)
Develop test criteria for

production readiness.
Keep history of completed

testing.
Tools in place for

administering the
environment.
Maintain a log history of

Figure 5: Log File of Content Promoted to Production
Tools in place to assist authors/developers in

diagnosing problems in the development content.
Development Content Store See Figure 6.
The development Content Store is where all new content is Make change management a major focus.
authored or created.
Development Best Practices:

Security model should reflect only the development
environment.
Design policies and procedures specifically for

development.
Data sources are typically static but representative

of production.
Criteria in place for moving content to Test or Pre-

production.
Maintain a log history of items moved to Test or Pre-

production.
Design folder structure to meet author/developer

requirements.
Tools in place for administering the environment.

Figure 6: Broken Data Lineage
Consolidating and Merging Cognos

Business Intelligence Environments
Merging or consolidating Cognos environments can be a

challenge even in a small environment. In a large
environment the difficulties are magnified. Creating a plan Step 1: Determine Scope of Merger
that reflects the specific needs when merging environments is
essential. Using tools that make the task easier and minimize Determine the scope of the environments to be merged. This
risk can help insure success and reduce the time and effort requires detailed analyses to discover the data needed for
involved. planning. Needed information includes:
Managers or administrators are often faced with the task of Extent of similarities and dissimilarities between
consolidating or merging Cognos Business Intelligence environments.
environments. This may be due to mergers, a need for cost
savings, or simply a desire to reduce the number of Number of users.
environments. Invariably the consolidation involves users and
content that will be merged into a new or existing Amount of content.
environment. This requires careful planning and flawless
execution to succeed. Duplication of users and/or content between
environments.
Merging environments is a major project. It involves merging
one existing environment into another or merging two or Differences in security model (if any) between source
more environments into a new one. An example would be and target.
merging two Cognos 8 environments into a new Cognos 10
environment. Identify and eliminate unused content if possible.
Identify special issues depending on the specific needs models. Identifying and resolving these issues is absolutely
of the environments. necessary for a successful merger.
If the merger involves more than two environments this Step 2: Planning and Execution
information is required for all environments under
consideration. In many respects the task will be significantly After determining the scope of the merger using the
easier if there is no overlap in users and content between the information gleaned from the environments, identify and
environments to be merged. layout the key tasks in the right sequence. Most problems in a
merger occur when key steps are missed or performed in the
Separate and Distinct Environments: wrong order. Planning includes:
Source and target
environments that are Collect required information in detail.
dissimilar and have no
overlap reduce the tasks Decide how to handle common issues.
involved.
See adjacent: Decide how to handle unused content.
Similar or Overlapping Environments: Modify (if necessary) the security model in the target
When the source and target environment.
environments are similar
there are more tasks to Map the tasks to the timeline.
address before merging the
two environments. Review the plan with key constituencies.
Here both source and target Testing and validation.

are similar raising the
Communicate the plan to users and set expectations.
possibility for multiple
issues on common data Execute the plan.
sources, folders, and
To avoid a messy deployment you can use a product like

NetVisn to perform the merger in a more controlled manner.
Advantages: Alternatively you can use a deployment package instead, but

this is an “all or nothing” approach that can instill fear in even
Allows content to move from the source to the target the most careful planners. With a deployment package there
with known outcomes. is no selectivity below the folder level and personal reports
cannot be dealt with at all unless you take all of the personal
Greatly reduces risk if hundreds or thousands of users reports that are in the Content Store. But for many this may be
must be moved. the only alternative.
Infinite level of selectivity around objects: reports, Remember, planning is the single most important part of the
personal folders and content, etc. entire effort in merging or consolidating environments. The
time you spend here has a huge payback in terms or risk
Validates all objects as they are being moved to insure avoidance and minimizing problems.
that all dependent objects are moved together and will
work in the new environment.
Minimizes or eliminates any orphan content.
Best Practices for Implementing

IBM Cognos BI Security
Controlling user access in an IBM Cognos environment can organization of groups. Study this organization to see if it can
be summarized by these two goals: be used to control access in Cognos, probably to content.
Alternatively, you may be using an external security
Secure sensitive data from unwarranted access, but allow the specifically for Cognos, such as Cognos Series 7. Because an
necessary data to be available to all business intelligence account must belong to a group in Series 7 in order to be
consumers. recognized by Cognos BI, you have a couple of choices:
Control access to Cognos BI capabilities, both globally and Create groups in Cognos security to organize accounts
package based, so that content is created and distributed by that will be used to control access in Cognos, either for
approved authors, and that Cognos license limits are respected. capability or content, though probably the latter.
Add all accounts to just a single group and manage all

access using the Cognos namespace groups and roles.
The best practices described here may not be the best in all
environments but will hopefully help those new to Cognos BI
or for those about to refactor how Cognos security is set up.
Groups or Roles
Group and role objects in the Cognos namespace behave
Use Existing Groups almost identically. The difference is that groups can contain
only accounts and other groups, while roles can contain
If your external security is also used in a corporate accounts, groups and other roles.
environment it’s likely that the accounts are maintained in an
Organizing multiple groups in a role could get complicated groups; for example, Payroll Unit Consumers and Payroll Unit
very quickly, so it may make sense if you use the role for Authors. In this case, both groups will be used on report
broad access control and the groups for limited access. A security but the access permissions would be set according to
simpler rule to follow would be to use roles to control access how read and write permissions are aligned.
to capabilities, and groups to manage access to content.
Following this simple rule can save you a lot of confusion and
headaches down the road.
Managing Capabilities
Capabilities are used in Cognos BI to control access to features
Managing Content Access and functions such as the reporting studios and
administration tools. There are a number of default Cognos
The design of security access to Cognos BI content first namespace groups that are created during the Cognos
requires an analysis of the types of business data available. installation that have certain capabilities defined. For
Generally data will be organized at a high level by business example, Authors and Query Users have access to Query
unit or functionality, such as order processing or finance for Studio, but Authors also have access to Report Studio. It is
example. Data may then be classified by employee position. recommended that new roles be created to manage user
For example, managers would have access to payroll detail capabilities that match the distribution of your Cognos
reports but clerks may only view high level summary reports. licenses. For example, a role could be created for power users
One solution would be to create a group for the business unit to access all studios and another role for users which only
(Payroll Unit) and groups for more limited access (Payroll need a PowerPlay license.
Managers). Managers would belong to both groups. The
reports which all payroll unit employees can view would use The advantage of organizing capabilities this way is that it
Payroll Unit for security and limited access reports would use makes it easier to manage your Cognos BI licensing
Payroll Managers. compliance.
You will also need to manage read and write permissions to

the BI reports. One method would be to create separate
SUMMA RY
By following many of these best practices you can The IBM Cognos Content Store plays a vital role
establish some structure to how security is applied that in the administration and productivity of the
will help keep order in this area as your BI environment Cognos Business Intelligence Solution. In a well
grows and changes. managed installation with a focus on best
practices, and the right tools to work with, the
Without this, you are more likely to evolve quickly into a
situation where your security is complicated and difficult, Content Store(s) can function flawlessly. It does
or impossible, to maintain. not require constant attention but there are
some things you need to pay attention to on a
regular basis. If you do this you can eliminate
pain and risk from your installation and focus
on giving your BI users what they need with
high uptime.
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REVISED EDITION

The least understood aspect of

The Role of the IBM Cognos Content Store

The Cognos Content Store has two essential roles:

Size of the Content Store

Content Store Table Structure and Access

This often goes unnoticed until a problem

Top 10 Key Metrics

Can be a key indicator of real or potential

Tracking growth should be done at least

3. NUMBER OF OBJECTS BY TYPE

It’s helpful to track the relationship between the

Best Practice: Create specific packages for individual

Example: Figure 3 shows an object count summary by

Users may be saving output from

Best Practice - Set retention rules

Example: Figure 4 is showing

6. VERSION CREEP Best practice - Purging public folders of unused content

8. UNUSED OBJECTS 10. DUPLICATE OBJECTS

Managing Content Store Growth

Controlling Growth Set and enforce retention policies

Managing Multiple Content Stores

Test or QA or Pre-Production: Validate the functional

Test or Pre-Production Content Store items moved to production (including who-what-

Develop test criteria for

Keep history of completed

Tools in place for

Maintain a log history of

Tools in place to assist authors/developers in

Development Best Practices:

Design policies and procedures specifically for

Data sources are typically static but representative

Criteria in place for moving content to Test or Pre-

Maintain a log history of items moved to Test or Pre-

Design folder structure to meet author/developer

Tools in place for administering the environment.

Consolidating and Merging Cognos

Merging or consolidating Cognos environments can be a

Here both source and target Testing and validation.

To avoid a messy deployment you can use a product like

Advantages: Alternatively you can use a deployment package instead, but

Minimizes or eliminates any orphan content.

Best Practices for Implementing

Add all accounts to just a single group and manage all

You will also need to manage read and write permissions to

© Envisn Information Solutions

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