Cognos Planning 8.4 - Starting Planning Server Issue

[danielcadavid]

Hi There,

I've been fighting with this issue for about 2 weeks and I guess is time to ask for help.

I'm stalling Cognos Planning 8.4 over Windows 2003 SP2. The database is Oracle 10g R2 (10.2.0.3.0). The oracle client installed in the server is version 10.2.0.1.0

This is the issue:

I have two separate users (instances), one for the “Content Store” and another one for the “Planning Store” (both users were created before and with the proper right as it says in the manual). The Cognos Planning 8.4 installation went well but…when I try to start the services I get this error:


[ ERROR ] Failed HRESULT [0x80004005] :The service failed to start because it could not successfully open a database connection with the Planning Store or the Content Store configured in Cognos Configuration. Details:
Database Errors:  Source: OraOLEDB Description: ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified Number: -2147467259 SQLState:  NativeError: 12154

There is no issues with the oracle client, tnsping works,  SQL plus works, ODBC works and in fact the “Content Store” database was created with out issues and the services that use it ( IBM Cognos 8 ) is up. And both connections are setup identically, but using different user (I have try the same user though, the one that works).

So the only service that is not up is the “Planning Server” service, no tables are created in the user I use to establish the connection to the database, but I can manually add, delete, drop tables…so is not lack of rights, I have even used a user with DBA right to grant the connection to the database and I still get the same error message.

Cognos Connection works fine, everything since to look fine but the darm service doesn't want to work and I still getting the same error.

I have surf the Cognos Knowledge Base, Oracle Knowledge Base and even the forums here, but not luck.

Any Ideas???  ???

[praveennb]

Have you tried this KB

http://support.cognos.com/knowledgebase/googlesearch?load_kb_document=1&dr=kb1&uniqueid=138896

i tried to search with the error codes, i get some hits on the KB,
http://support.cognos.com/knowledgebase/googlesearch?sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&gs_site=cogsupp_kb_ext_collection&client=cogsupp_topbox&q=[+ERROR+]+Failed+HRESULT+[0x80004005]&num=20&num=20


Check your environment variables for JAVA_HOME if you have setup any for the previous version.

[ducthcogtechie]

During the installation of the oracle client on the planning app server, did you select the administrator option, that includes the oledb driver?

[danielcadavid]

Hi guys!!

I have tried it all and finally I make it work, it was a simple fix. After a week or so I finally met with our DBA (since the error mention Tnsnames) and after probably 4 hours he came out with this solution.

Solution 1: We modified the Tnsnames.ora and the Sql.ora

Sql.ora Before:

NAMES.DEFAULT_DOMAIN = world

SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)

NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (TNSNAMES,onames)

Tnsnames.ora Before:

EPTST.world =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
        (ADDRESS =
          (COMMUNITY = tcp.world)
          (PROTOCOL = TCP)
          (Host = tst1)
          (Port = 1521)
        )
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA = (SID =eptst)
    )
  )


Sql.ora after DBA modification:

NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (TNSNAMES)

Tnsnames.ora after DBA modification:

EPTST =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
        (ADDRESS =
          (PROTOCOL = TCP)
          (Host = tst1)
          (Port = 1521)
        )
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA = (SID =eptst)
    )
  )

And suddenly it works, all the services went up, I asked him the reason but he couldn't explain why it had worked. So I wasn't happy with this solution since we modify something that was working and it may affect other connections.

I reversed all the changes and star everything again, doing this I realized the SID as lower case (SID =eptst).

Solution 2:

I open the “IBM Cognos Configuration” and find out that the “Content Store” connection IS NOT case sensitive (SID could be capital or lower case or mixed), but the Planning Store connection IS case sensitive. As simple as that, I just modify the SID part in the connection string to look exactly like the SID in the Tnsname and all  started working.  The only connection you can test is the Content Store, so I assumed the Planning Store will work in the same way and I guess wrong since I create the connections both with capital words.

Thanks for your suggestion and I'm sorry for such a long answer  ;D

[sascha]

I'm sorry for such a long answer

Don't excuse yourself. We are very happy for such detailled answers explaining the right solution to a problem  :)!
That's the way the forum should work.

Thanks a lot