Business Intelligence, Analytics and Cognos

If you want Cognos® Workspace users to filter content in a workspace based on a data item that is not visible in the report, you must include this data item in its own query and name it  _BusinessInsight_  within the IBM Cognos Report Studio report. Therefore, the data item must exist in both the query used for the data container (such as the list, crosstab, or chart) and in this separate query. For example, a chart shows the revenue for the product lines for each region. You want to filter the chart to show only data for the year 2008. When you author the report, in addition to including Year in the Query1 used for the chart data container, you create a new query named  _BusinessInsight_  that includes Year.

Some times for stubborn intermittent problems like users complaining 'random' slow down of reports or errors without any description, you want to investigate multiple layers. You can start with following: 1.        Enable Cognos Auditing and check COGPIF_USERLOGON with COGPIF_ACTION to understand what operations were exactly going on during the time of error/slow down. 2.        Tally that with IIS Logs. In case of multi-server deployment, Audit gives you the IP Address of application server that handled the request. If there are any network related issues, IIS might have more information. If IIS logs have no corresponding entries, you know that client (Analysis Studio, Workspace Advanced, etc) is not even hitting the server. 3.        If IIS logs show corresponding entries, POST and GET operation and no network related errors, then check for Cognos logs (cogserver.log)