Contributor Session Tracking & Input Validation

[JonESS]

Hi all,

I'm relatively new to Cognos and am currently using Planning 8.4.1.

From what I've gathered, for 8.4 onwards, Contributor has been using Java and no longer Active X and you can set rules for data validation on the client-side. Does anyone know how data validation is done (if any) on the server-side?

As for Session tracking, javascript and cookies has to be enabled on the browser in order for Contributor to work properly. How does it track sessions in cookies? I've tried looking through the temporary internet files folder after opening Contributor but I do not see any being created.

Appreciate any info you can provide.

Thank you.

[ericlfg]

Hi JonESS,

Welcome to Planning! :)

I can try to give you a hand..

You are interested in understanding how to accomplish both client side and server side data input validations from the contributor client?  There is no difference between server and client validations.  You configure the validations in the Contributor Admin Console (CAC) to be applied to specific ranges of columns / rows in the grid that are evaluated when the enter key is pressed or saved.  The same contributor client is used on the server just as it would be used on a client system.  If this isn't quite what you're looking for, perhaps giving me an example of what you're looking for will help me better understand your requirements.

As for session tracking we do create cookies, but they're session cookies and not stored in the file system like a persistent cookie, but rather in RAM.  Additionally, depending on how much 'tracking' you need to have for users using the grid, you may want to consider enabling audit tracking from within the CAC.  This will give extremely detailed information on every modification a user makes to values in the grid..   

As with the first paragraph, if I haven't captured your questions context properly, perhaps an example or two would help me (or maybe others) understand your requirements and address them more specifically.

Cheers!