Content Store issues with BI 8 -> 10 upgrade

[lewisk]

My company supports a Cognos Business Intelligence environment that is used by a DoD agency.  The application servers are hosted by a different contractor; we have access to the Windows servers but not to the Linux box where the Cognos Content Store resides.  So if we have any issues with the content store we have no command-line access to the database, but must submit a help ticket.

Our production system was upgraded a couple of years back from BI 8 to BI 10.2.1.  That was before I came on board.  The beta site is still on BI 8.  Recently the contractor that maintains the servers upgraded Oracle versions; somehow they messed up the content store database for this beta site, as a result Cognos cannot connect to the content store.

I am wondering if we should wipe out the existing installation of BI 8 and try to install v10 from scratch.  Is it even possible to do this if you don't have direct access to the database server where the content store resides?  I have never performed a Cognos version installation or upgrade, only fix packs.

Thanks to anyone who can advise.

[prikala]

I think you should first sort out this:
  "Cognos cannot connect to the content store"

If your C8 can't connect to Oracle, there is no reason C10 could connect using same connection details (host,port, SID).

If your beta site has Oracle client installed, check that you can connect to database using sqlplus. If you can't, there is no point continuing before connection is ok.

You don't need direct access to database server when installing cognos. What is required is
- open port that the database instance listens to
- schema that is to be used as ContentStore (your Oracle DBA must do this. Of course necessary privileges are required for the schema user: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21341241 )

[lewisk]

I think you should first sort out this:
  "Cognos cannot connect to the content store"

If your C8 can't connect to Oracle, there is no reason C10 could connect using same connection details (host,port, SID).

The problem is not that we can't connect to the IP, port etc.  When I said they messed up the database, I really meant they messed up the database.  They migrated to a new Oracle version and somehow the Cognos schema - the one Cognos uses to connect to the database - isn't there any more.  It's not clear yet if there is a backup which they could go back to.  We could ask them to export the content store database from Production and set that up in Beta, but I'm assuming that wouldn't work because of the version difference.  That's why I was thinking we might need to do a fresh install of Cognos 10 instead of trying the upgrade path.  But I don't know how much additional work that would be, or what pitfalls that would bring us to.

Thank you.

[prikala]

You are right, Cognos8 can't work whith Cognos10 contentstore but you can skip the Cognos8 part...

This should work:
- ask DB contractor to export-import ContentStore schema from Production to Beta
- install Cognos10 @ Beta, point Cognos10 to the new ContentStore schema
- set up IIS etc for the new Cognos10 @ Beta

Now you should have almost exact duplicate of Production at your Beta environment.

Other option could be
- ask DB contractor for a new schema in Beta database
- install Cognos10 etc
- export-import Cognos Contentstore from Production using Cognos deployment functionality

As for pitfalls and additional work. Difficult to say. These come to mind:
- security: Does your beta use same authentication source (AD, ldap etc) as Production?
If not, do not use database export-import. Start with clean content store, set up security and then migrate data from production using cognos deployment
- you new Beta is a duplicate of production. Do you really want everything from Production?
  cleaning, replacing production data sources with beta data sources etc
- In production, do you use scheduled reports delivered via email?
  These schedules will be copied to the Beta -> as soon as you fire up Beta, it well start sending emails -> prevent Beta from sending emails, disable unwanted schedules and then enable emails