Planning 8.4 client uses port 80 when launching Contributor

[trond_1970]

Hi
We currently run a 7.3/8.1 installation of Cognos Planning which is very unstable when having
multiple users. Due to this we would like to use Planning 8.4 during the coming budget process.

We have installed Planning 8.4 FSC and it is running ok on our local area network
All of our web-clients go through some central proxy servers when accessing internet/intranet.
This is due to bandwith/security issues.

Planning 8.4 is functioning well when launched in same ip-network as the backend web-server.
However when launching from remote location/vpn it fails to lauch the contributor client.
Prior to launching Contributor I see that web-client has opened several connections to
our proxy server on port 8080 (which is the proxy setting defined in Internet Explorer)
However when clicking on an e-list item to launch Contributor this fails.
After some seconds the the java client comes with a popup. "fething app XML file for 'provagent 8.4" from
"http://budgetserver.company.com/cognos8/rcp_updates/provagent_8.4_app.xml".
Apparently it does some check in context of the client version before launcing contributor.
Using netstat on the webclient PC I now see that the client has opened some ports
directly to the budget/Planning webserver on port 80. It is logical that the client is failing when
trying communication directly to the budget/Planning webserver as the corporate firewall is
set to drop these connections.

As our network is tightened down only to allow surfing through proxy servers we are having problems.
We have about 450 client spread across 250 locations , so any local configuration is out of scope.

Has anyone experienced the same and found a bypass?
Cognos support is coming up short....

[sreddyy]

Hi,

Thanks for sharing your experience with 8.4. May I ask how your migration went from 8.1 to 8.4. We are on 8.1 and planning to migrate to 8.4 and received suggestions from cognos support to migrate to 8.2/8.3 first then migrate to 8.4.
Can you please share any document or critical steps that you captured during migration and also the time it took for migrating each environment?

Thanks.

[trond_1970]

Hi
we migrated from 8.1 to 8.3 and then 8.4.
The migration itself went basically ok, allthough we had to 'nuke' the converted 8.3 oracle schema, once
and redo the migration. This was easy to redo.

We have installed  a new server for each version so now I currently have 3 servers , each installed with
8.1, 8.3 and 8.4. Since we have allready have an operating VmWare environment this was no.
So we did no upgrade on the application it self, just a fresh install and the migrating the models into new version.

Version 8.3 basically was ok, but we entereted problems with our proxy server environment. Squid proxy
has som difficulties coping with the Soap components used (when populating the e-lists/node tree).

This problem vanished in 8.4 , but we then stuck into this problem where Contributor is checking for
clients update directly on port 80 and not the proxy port in Internet Explorer 8080...

[Anzarob]

Hi!

I'm facing the very same issue as yours..Have you been able to solve it?

I'm really thinking to rollback to 8.3 version.

[Gunes]

Hi,

Hopefully I am not too late... but I believe the issue that you are seeing is caused through a known defect, which has been fixed in a hotsite.

From your description I believe you are hitting a problem which has been resolved by applying 8.4 GA (which I would advise as you should not be on FCS) + FP1 plus the first hotsite 8.4.28.124. Alternatively FP2 should be released any day now, and this should be sufficient to get over this hurdle.

Hope this helps & Good Luck