Application tier components

[cognosun]

Can any one explain the difference between :

1) Application tier components
2) Cognos BI server
3) Dispatcher
4) Content manager.

I know that Content manager is a service in Dispatcher....but really want to know how first 3 differ.

[cognosun]

Got few thoughts...

1) Application tier components ( includes application components like Cognos connection, Administration, Report studio, Query studio and other Studios, Event studio).

2) Cognos BI server ( terminology wise i guess this includes dispatcher and it's services )

In that case why Cognos documentation specifically differenciates Application tier components, BI Server, Dispatcher and Content manager ?

[RobsWalker68]

Hi,

For a full description have a look in the Cognos Architecture and Deployment guide as this explains all the components in some detail and how they interact with each other.

In short though think of the Cognos BI Server as the installation as a whole.  An installation whether it be installed on a single server or distributed over many servers will contain the installed components:

Gateway,
Application Tier
Content manager.

The application tier will contain a dispatcher to handle the routing of requests to and from the client and the initiation and co-ordination of services such as the report, batch, job, monitor services etc.  If you open Cognos Configuration on a given machine and click on the service or look in the administration console at a particular dispatcher you can see which services it is running.

The content manager can be installed on the same server as other application tier components or it can be installed seperately.  Either way the job of the content manager is to primarily handle communication with the Content Store database.  A dispatcher will co-ordinate this communication process.

Hope this gives you an initial idea although as mentioned look at the architecture guide as this gives you a much fuller explantion

Cheers

Rob

[cognosun]

Read more docs and found...

Application tier contains 2 things:

1) Applications

2) Cognos BI Server

Applications are Cognos connection, Administration, Report studio, Query studio,  other Studios, Event studio and more scalable things.

Cognos BI server includes 2 things which are , Content manager and Dispatcher. ( Content manager is actually a service in dispatcher which talks with content store , so BI server is actually 50% dispatcher and 50% Content manager).


Adding to this, there is also another term coined in docs, which is, Report Server.

Which i think is used to facilitate 2 services (Report service and Batch report service), and a BIB executable process.