How do I restore a deleted report

[dmusson17]

Hello,

We are running single dispatcher environment, 11.2.3 on-prem with Content db on an on-prem SQL Server.  It's Monday and we need to retrieve a report definition that was deleted on Friday.  Our ops team is in the process of restoring a snapshot of the dispatch server from before Friday that I can log into and download the XML report definition from, which I can them upload to the prod server.  My question is, is the report xml stored in a retrievable format the Content Store db (table CMOBJPROPS7)?  If yes, is an alternative method of restoring the deleted report to restore a backup of the content store db and pull the XML from there?

Thanks for any insight/input/pros/cons,
Dave

[MFGF]

Hello,

We are running single dispatcher environment, 11.2.3 on-prem with Content db on an on-prem SQL Server.  It's Monday and we need to retrieve a report definition that was deleted on Friday.  Our ops team is in the process of restoring a snapshot of the dispatch server from before Friday that I can log into and download the XML report definition from, which I can them upload to the prod server.  My question is, is the report xml stored in a retrievable format the Content Store db (table CMOBJPROPS7)?  If yes, is an alternative method of restoring the deleted report to restore a backup of the content store db and pull the XML from there?

Thanks for any insight/input/pros/cons,
Dave

Hi,

The report spec will be held in the content store, but the problem you will have if you just restore the content store is you won't know which of the many report specs in there are the specific report you are looking for. You could spin up a temporary install of Cognos Analytics and point it to the restored content store, possibly, but would that take longer than just restoring the entire server?

Cheers!

MF.

[dmusson17]

Thanks MF. 

I first tried restoring a backup of the content store db and pulling the xml from the spec column of CMOBJPROPS7 (got the CMID by looking it up in CMOBJNAMES).  However when I tried to create a new report from that xml I got the following error:

This document does not contain a valid report specification.

Reason:
XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

URL:
https://ourcognossitecom/ibmcognos/bi/pat/rsapp.htm

Line:
9038

Character:
8

I didn't spend too much time trying to figure that out.  The xml looked complete and this is a pretty gnarly report so I moved on to plan b, which was connecting our Cognos install to the restored content store backup, logging in, extracting the spec/xml from the report that got deleted, connected Cognos back to the live content store db, and used that spec/xml to recreate the report with no issues.

I don't why the spec pulled from the db table didn't work, but luckily we are a small enough shop that plan b worked fine.

[MFGF]

Thanks MF. 

I first tried restoring a backup of the content store db and pulling the xml from the spec column of CMOBJPROPS7 (got the CMID by looking it up in CMOBJNAMES).  However when I tried to create a new report from that xml I got the following error:

This document does not contain a valid report specification.

Reason:
XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

URL:
https://ourcognossitecom/ibmcognos/bi/pat/rsapp.htm

Line:
9038

Character:
8

I didn't spend too much time trying to figure that out.  The xml looked complete and this is a pretty gnarly report so I moved on to plan b, which was connecting our Cognos install to the restored content store backup, logging in, extracting the spec/xml from the report that got deleted, connected Cognos back to the live content store db, and used that spec/xml to recreate the report with no issues.

I don't why the spec pulled from the db table didn't work, but luckily we are a small enough shop that plan b worked fine.

Glad you got the report back! Thanks for the update - it might be useful for anyone in future in a similar situation.

Cheers!

MF.

[sdf]

@dmusson17

Probably a good idea to start a backup of your Team Content. That way you wont need to restore from ContentStore db. You can just import the backup within the same server but just rename or put into another folder or to a test/staging environment. Just a suggestion.


sdef