Modified 'query subject' icon

[lewisk]

I am working with Cognos BI 10.2.1.  In Framework Manager I have a query which gets its data from a database procedure.  I have an additional query which is of the type "Query subject based on existing model object" which gets its data from the first query I mentioned.  I added an output column to the underlying stored procedure and then added this column to the latter query subject.  The new data element is showing a different icon from the others, and I wonder what this means.

The attached image shows the difference.  All the other icons have a small hourglass symbol (or it might be a number 8, hard to tell) in the upper left corner, but the icon for the new data column does not.  Does anyone know what this distinction means?  Thank you.

[bus_pass_man]

It's the user overlay icon.   It's a wee person.   If you look at the users, groups, and roles ui in the portal you will see collections of the things for the last two.

The overlay is trying to tell you that object security has been applied to the query subject and 3 of the 4 query items.  Things which are undefined don't have the overlay.   They inherit the object security of their parent.  This may or may not be what you want.

The significance of the missing overlay for the query item that you have just added to the query subject is that you added the query item to the query subject after defining object security.   

You will need to make a decision about how you want to handle the new query item. 

Cognos education documents two basic approaches to object security.  One is deny then grant, in which the default is to deny all objects unless explicitly granted.   The second is grant then deny.   The recommended approach is to set the grant or deny to the model root, which would mean that all child objects in the model will inherit that state unless you make a conscious attempt to modify the object security state of the child object.

In terms of work flow, object security should follow fairly late in the modeling process so that adding new objects contributes less object security administration, such as what you are experiencing now.