Filter Conditions dialog in 11.0.6

[dougp]

I found two issues with the Filter Condition dialog box in Cognos Analytics 11.0.6 Reporting:


1.  There are two.

Go to the source pane.  Find a query item and right-click on it.  Select Filter for Report....  Cognos presents the Filter Condition dialog box you saw in previous CA 11.0.x releases and in Workspace Advanced in Cognos 10.2.x.  (Report Studio's looked more Windowsy, but I think it was also the same thing.)

Now select a list column body.  Click on the filter (funnel) icon in the context-sensitive toolbar and select Create Custom Filter.  Cognos will present the new, improved Filter Condition dialog.  This one is much simpler.  For example, if you selected a character field, you're no longer bothered with the ability to filter based on starts with, ends with, contains or a SQL pattern. :P  There's also no New button below the Selected values list.


2.  It crashes.

IBM Support has been unable to reproduce this problem and, hopefully, you will too.  I'll describe it anyway.

In Cognos 10.2.1 and 11.0.4 (the two version I have used), the Filter Condition dialog had problems with query items that had many distinct values.  My favorite example is my Financial Data Mart's Document Number.  There are 3.9 million distinct values.

The user's perspective:  The list of available values (on the left) takes a long time to load.  The user with use the Keywords: box to enter a fairly specific search and get results.  Alternately, they click the New button and enter the value they seek.  Click OK.  Finish building the report, run it to PDF, print the PDF, close the report, deliver paper to boss, make boss happy.  The whole process may take 3 minutes if the bosses office is distant.

The database server returns the list of distinct values to Cognos in about 15 seconds.  Cognos starts processing the list into something it can display.  Did the user click OK or Cancel?  Don't care -- keep running -- must finish.  At this point, the CPU core running the reporting process used by this report session is at 100%.  It stays that way until the process completes -- 97 minutes in one case, 6 days in another.  If multiple users do the same thing, the server stops responding.

I had a class of 10 students all do this at the same time.  The system was so unresponsive we couldn't even get into the server to kill one or more reporting processes.  We had to unplug the server to get it to reboot.


Cognos Analytics 11.0.6 improves this.  Now it just crashes with this error:
DPR-ERR-2072
Unable to load balance a request with absolute affinity, most likely due to a failure to connect to the remote dispatcher. See the remote dispatcher detailed logs for more information. Check the health status of the installed system by using the dispatcher diagnostics URIs.

This is particularly helpful in my case since I have a single-server install (no remote dispatcher) and do not employ load balancing.


The moral of the story is this:  It doesn't matter how fundamental a feature is (Why would they change that?) or that 11.0.6 seems like it should be a patch to 11.0.5 (or 11.0.4).  Test every feature as if you're upgrading from 11 to 13.

[Lynn]

I found two issues with the Filter Condition dialog box in Cognos Analytics 11.0.6 Reporting:


1.  There are two.

Go to the source pane.  Find a query item and right-click on it.  Select Filter for Report....  Cognos presents the Filter Condition dialog box you saw in previous CA 11.0.x releases and in Workspace Advanced in Cognos 10.2.x.  (Report Studio's looked more Windowsy, but I think it was also the same thing.)

Now select a list column body.  Click on the filter (funnel) icon in the context-sensitive toolbar and select Create Custom Filter.  Cognos will present the new, improved Filter Condition dialog.  This one is much simpler.  For example, if you selected a character field, you're no longer bothered with the ability to filter based on starts with, ends with, contains or a SQL pattern. :P  There's also no New button below the Selected values list.


2.  It crashes.

IBM Support has been unable to reproduce this problem and, hopefully, you will too.  I'll describe it anyway.

In Cognos 10.2.1 and 11.0.4 (the two version I have used), the Filter Condition dialog had problems with query items that had many distinct values.  My favorite example is my Financial Data Mart's Document Number.  There are 3.9 million distinct values.

The user's perspective:  The list of available values (on the left) takes a long time to load.  The user with use the Keywords: box to enter a fairly specific search and get results.  Alternately, they click the New button and enter the value they seek.  Click OK.  Finish building the report, run it to PDF, print the PDF, close the report, deliver paper to boss, make boss happy.  The whole process may take 3 minutes if the bosses office is distant.

The database server returns the list of distinct values to Cognos in about 15 seconds.  Cognos starts processing the list into something it can display.  Did the user click OK or Cancel?  Don't care -- keep running -- must finish.  At this point, the CPU core running the reporting process used by this report session is at 100%.  It stays that way until the process completes -- 97 minutes in one case, 6 days in another.  If multiple users do the same thing, the server stops responding.

I had a class of 10 students all do this at the same time.  The system was so unresponsive we couldn't even get into the server to kill one or more reporting processes.  We had to unplug the server to get it to reboot.


Cognos Analytics 11.0.6 improves this.  Now it just crashes with this error:
DPR-ERR-2072
Unable to load balance a request with absolute affinity, most likely due to a failure to connect to the remote dispatcher. See the remote dispatcher detailed logs for more information. Check the health status of the installed system by using the dispatcher diagnostics URIs.

This is particularly helpful in my case since I have a single-server install (no remote dispatcher) and do not employ load balancing.


The moral of the story is this:  It doesn't matter how fundamental a feature is (Why would they change that?) or that 11.0.6 seems like it should be a patch to 11.0.5 (or 11.0.4).  Test every feature as if you're upgrading from 11 to 13.

I see the same behavior you describe for item 1 in 11.0.5. I shudder at the thought of item 2!