Different result when running the same report in HTML format

[Fredrik]

Hi,

We have problem with reports in HTML-format. If I run the same report many times I get different results, it can show 100 as result the first time 50 the next time and the 100 again if I run it a third time. If run the same report in PDF or Excel format i always get the same and the right result.

What can cause this inconsistency i HTML-format reports?

Regards

Fredrik

[MFGF]

Hi,

We have problem with reports in HTML-format. If I run the same report many times I get different results, it can show 100 as result the first time 50 the next time and the 100 again if I run it a third time. If run the same report in PDF or Excel format i always get the same and the right result.

What can cause this inconsistency i HTML-format reports?

Regards

Fredrik

Hi,

That sounds like a great party-trick! :-) I think it's fair to say it's not a common flaw, or else the internet would be awash with people saying Cognos 10 delivers unreliable results. That probably means it's something to do with your setup - the trick is in figuring out where to look.

Is this just for one specific report or do you see the same behaviour for multiple reports? A single package or all packages?

Are these results where you are running the report interactively, or are you running it in the background?

Are you connecting to a single data source or to multiple sources?

Does the report use External Data?

What is the setup of your architecture - do you have a single application server in your Cognos instance or is processing split across multiple application servers?

Do you see the same issue if you find the report in Cognos Connection and use the "run with options" button and select "Save the report" (when rendering as HTML)?

Sorry - loads of questions but no real answers :)

MF.

[Fredrik]

Some answer to all your questions  ;)

Is this just for one specific report or do you see the same behaviour for multiple reports? A single package or all packages? In multiple reports and even in reports created in worksspace advanced

Are these results where you are running the report interactively, or are you running it in the background? Interactvely, have tried a couple of times in the background with no failure so far

Are you connecting to a single data source or to multiple sources? Multiple source

Does the report use External Data? No

What is the setup of your architecture - do you have a single application server in your Cognos instance or is processing split across multiple application servers? Don´t know

Do you see the same issue if you find the report in Cognos Connection and use the "run with options" button and select "Save the report" (when rendering as HTML)?No not so far, have tried a couple of times

Regards

Fredrik

[Robl]

My first guess would be that someone is changing the data in the database.
Next guess would be to try and clear any browser cache or db cache.

I had a similar problem with pdf formatting that was caused by different default printers on the two servers.

Is it possible that different servers are connecting to different databases?
Depending on how you've defined your db connections there might be some way for them to route to different databases depending on which server process the request.

[CognosPaul]

My guess is that this is a distributed environment and the dispatchers are set up differently. Each run gets routed to a different server which is processing it differently.

What kind of data source is this? Is it something that is configured on a server level (A/S400 or other ODBC connections, for example)?

[Fredrik]

Hi,

It all seems to be a cache memory problem we got. We are using relational data with live updata from the sourcesystem. PDF och Excel goes back to database to get the data but the HTML output get the data from the cache which isn´t always up to date.

/Fredrik

[cielo]

Do we have any findings for this issue? HTML and PDF output versions are entirely different.Where could be the wrong?