Upgrade to Cognos 8 BI - what to expect?

[Rebekah]

We have been told that one of the biggest changes is that the product is more strict about using Cogno's provided functionality as opposed to accepting Native SQL or allowing work arounds to make something work.

Does this sound accurate to any of you and/or have any of you experienced issues because of this?

Admittedly our concern is due to the majority of our frameworks being built improperly so we've had to pull some rabbits out of our hats to get the reports to work; but nevertheless, we have lots and lots of frameworks and reports that have been "rigged" to work.Ã,  So we've done it to ourselves with decisions from the top to use the product before we really knew how to do it.Ã,  ("fools rush in" fits here very well)

I'm wondering if we would do better to run our current version and 8 BI parallel and start from scratch with our existing frameworks and reports in an attempt to migrate them over to the new product rather than just flipping a switch and try to fix it all at once.

Mind you, i'm not a decision maker, but i don't mind doing the research and providing the evidence if it makes for a better end result.

Any insight you guys might have would be appreciated.

[MDXpressor]

I know of no reason why you can't use Native SQL in C8.Ã,  Below is an image of the SQL Query builder in C8.Ã,  Native is certainly an available option...



Not knowing the full impact of workload, I would have to strongly make a case for a complete overhaul when moving to C8.Ã,  Taking the proper steps to plan an efficient model is only going to improve the performance of your models...

[Rebekah]

Well the decision to upgrade has already been made.Ã,  And i agree that starting from scratch, would effectively improve our overall use of the product.Ã,  And believe me, we soooo could use it!Ã,  our end users hate it because all they see is how long it takes for them to run reports.Ã, 

But our decision makers seem to think just "flipping the switch" to the new version and then just fix what's broken is the way to go.Ã, 

It's my understanding that though C8 is billed as an upgrade, it is truly a new install, a completely different package. So what about continueing to run our current version along side C8 and moving frameworks with reports over to the new version as we get them corrected.Ã,  Does that sound like a viable option?

Has anyone else out there gone thru the upgrade in this manner?

[MDXpressor]

Do a search on the Cognos KB for the following (Make sure to include Documentation and Proven Practices)...

Guideline
CRN to C8 Upgrade



There is a good section on single report upgrade utility as well, but this requires an upgraded framework as well.Ã,  Surely you would be able to get your hands on a dev environment to test on?

[Rebekah]

We do have a lab that is intended for this exact type of thing, but so far it has not been installed "successfully".

I've decided to keep following up on that so i can get in there myself and see what it's really all about.Ã,  Especially since our internal guidance has been that we won't be able to continue using native SQL in our frameworks but you've plainly shown that it's provided for.Ã,  To their credit, the folks we have designated as "Cognos Admins" really have too many other things going on to really spend time investigating and researching best practices.Ã,  I have plenty of assignments as well, but mine tend to involve the use of this product, so i and my users have a vested interest in doing this upgrade correctly.

Thanks so much for the point in the right direction.Ã,  i'll be checking that out this afternoon for sure.

[jguevin]

although not recommended by cognos, we had both reportnet 1.1 and C8 up and running at the same time on the same server.  We did exactly as you described, we migrated our CRN data over to C8.  We then copied our projects in FM and opened them up in FM8, published the new packages in C8 and verified that all was well.

  Native SQL can be used in FM8, we have a couple of models that have certain query subjects that are not directly from our star schema but are SQL.  There is a setting in the project in FM8 which allows you to write in SQL.  The default is Cognos SQL but you can change that to Native SQl in the Query Subject Definition.  Make sure if you do this you work with copies of the models because once they are opened in FM8, they are converted and will not work in CRN 1.1.

Hope this helps
Jeff