What you need to know before upgrading from IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 to IBM Cognos 8 BI

Transcription

1 Proven Practice What you need to know before upgrading from IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 to IBM Cognos 8 BI Product(s): IBM Cognos 8 BI Area of Interest: Upgrade/Migration

2 What you need to know before an upgrade from ReportNet 1.1 to Cognos 8 2 Copyright Copyright 2008 Cognos ULC (formerly Cognos Incorporated). Cognos ULC is an IBM Company. While every attempt has been made to ensure that the information in this document is accurate and complete, some typographical errors or technical inaccuracies may exist. Cognos does not accept responsibility for any kind of loss resulting from the use of information contained in this document. This document shows the publication date. The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. Any improvements or changes to the information contained in this document will be documented in subsequent editions. This document contains proprietary information of Cognos. All rights are reserved. No part of this document may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, or translated into another language without the prior written consent of Cognos. Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks of Cognos ULC (formerly Cognos Incorporated) in the United States and/or other countries. IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, or other countries, or both. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Information about Cognos products can be found at This document is maintained by the Best Practices, Product and Technology team. You can send comments, suggestions, and additions to cscogpp@ca.ibm.com.

3 What you need to know before an upgrade from ReportNet 1.1 to Cognos 8 3 Contents 1 INTRODUCTION DISCOVERY REVIEW DOCUMENTATION CONDUCT A SITE SURVEY PERFORM A SANDBOX TRIAL...6

4 What you need to know before an upgrade from ReportNet 1.1 to Cognos Introduction Like any business application that provides high value, it is important to develop a plan and allow adequate time for the upgrade of IBM Cognos ReportNet to IBM Cognos 8 BI in order to minimize the impact to the endusers. This document covers the first phase of the upgrade process. Discovery Plan Execute Deploy 2 Discovery One of the critical preparation stages before the upgrade is discovery. Conducting discovery ensures that all aspects of the upgrade and possible risks have been identified and can be considered as part of the plan. You should consider one or more of the Discovery steps. Review Documentation Conduct a Site Survey Perform a Sandbox Trial 2.1 Review Documentation There are several online resources available. Cognos Upgrade references are available online at 1. Download the latest IBM Cognos 8 Readme from the Documentation section: This is regularly updated with the latest list of known issues in the IBM Cognos 8 release. 2. Review the Cognos Knowledge Base What to expect in an upgrade from Cognos ReportNet or Cognos 8 : This is regularly updated with the list of areas that customers need to consider as part of their upgrade. It includes areas that should be considered for every upgrade and list product features where the behaviour has changed between releases. 3. Review the IBM Cognos 8 Installation Users Guide available from the Documentation section: Describes the steps necessary for the upgrade.

5 What you need to know before an upgrade from ReportNet 1.1 to Cognos Review the IBM Cognos 8 New Features Guide available from the Documentation section: A summary of the new features available to the users. It is recommended that modifications to your application be scheduled only after a successful upgrade from the previous release. 5. Determine if your current environment is supported for the upgraded installation. Consult the latest information about supported environments for your current release and the target release to ensure you consider any possible changes in hardware or 3 rd party software Conduct a Site Survey A site survey will help you scope out areas that need to be considered during the planning, preparation and upgrade. 1. BI Infrastructure Survey this information will help you chart out any changes that may be necessary to support your upgraded environment. include the computer server configurations, configurations and versions for web servers and security components, configuration for database access and database versions. 2. BI Application Inventory this defines the helps you plan the scope and phasing of your upgrade. list of FM models, packages and reports. list of SDK applications and their dependencies. 3. BI User Profile this information will help prioritize your efforts Profile the user base and size. Identify critical application users and the reports they use. Identify reports that are used by the broad user base or reports that are heavily used by certain users. 4. BI Configuration Survey this information will help identify additional areas that need to be considered during an upgrade. List any non-default BI application configuration settings set through Cognos Configuration. These settings will be preserved through the upgrade. Identify any customized files in the Cognos server installation that have been modified without Cognos Configuration. If your installation has ReportNet files that have been modified, you should review whether these customizations need to be carried forward. If so, plan on incorporating steps to update and test their counterparts in the IBM Cognos 8 installation.

6 What you need to know before an upgrade from ReportNet 1.1 to Cognos Perform a Sandbox Trial It is highly recommended that clients conduct a "sandbox" trial prior to the planned upgrade of their productions system. A sandbox trial will help to identify areas which should upgrade with minimal effort and areas which may require additional actions on the client s part. If issues arise in the trial, then Cognos customer support can be called upon to assist. Although it may take additional effort beforehand, by scheduling the sandbox trial a few weeks prior to the scheduled upgrade, it reduces the risk of any unplanned issues arising during the critical period of the production system upgrade that may have impacts elsewhere. The sandbox trial involves the following steps: 1. Identify scope of trial Identify reports that need not upgrade (unused reports, reports that don't run properly). Determine whether unused reports should be retired. Consider fixing reports that don t run correctly or retiring them. If they don t run correctly in IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 then they are unlikely to upgrade without issues. Identify a representative sample set of reports for to trial the upgrade. The representative sample should include: Critical reports - heavily used reports or those that are highly visible to executives, end-customers Groups of reports that are very similar in structure. We often find that clients either use a template for many reports or copy one report and re-purpose the report for something different. Select one report from each of these groups. If there are multiple data sources that the reports depend on, ensure there is coverage from each of those sources is included. 2. Assess whether any items in KB or the Readmes will impact the representative sample. Make appropriate plans for reports that will be impacted. Some impacts will be positive but may require some action by the client, some changes will be neutral and some change may require the client make modifications to the reports or their environment. 3. In IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1, validate the representative samples (Tools -> Validate Report).

7 What you need to know before an upgrade from ReportNet 1.1 to Cognos 8 7 It is recommended that you fix reported errors or warnings. ReportNet 1.1 validation is not on by default so it is likely many clients have constructed reports without having validated them. In IBM Cognos 8, report specification validation is on by default. IBM Cognos 8 has also tightened the use of the report specification language, so possible upgrade errors will be easily eliminated just by correcting the errors within the IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 reports. 4. Perform a trial upgrade of the validated representative sample IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 reports on a separate system. The Framework Manager model developed in CRN 1.1 is not modified in the upgrade. The model runs natively in IBM Cognos 8. (If the model is opened for modifications, it will be saved in a IBM Cognos 8 format. Please refer to the Framework Manager modeling user documents for more details) IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 reports specifications will be upgraded to Cognos 8 specification level. 5. Compare the upgraded representative sample IBM Cognos 8 reports on the "sandbox" system with the output from the production IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 counterparts. For reports that upgrade with no issues, then clients should expect similar reports to upgrade normally For any reports covered under Step 2, the client must make the appropriate adjustments to their installation. For any other issues, consider reporting them to customer support. They will be able to assist. In some cases, customer support may request a IBM Cognos ReportNet 1.1 client deployment with a subset of data in order to help troubleshoot and fix the reported issue. Once the sample set is clear of any issues, the client should be able to plan a smooth upgrade on their production system.