SOLVED !! - Cognos 10.2 New Page - PF-VAL-6165 Security Rejection

[xplorerdev]

Hi Gurus,

I have created a report in 10.2.0 report studio having some 57 check box value prompts. Now I am trying to call this report from within a new page by inserting a IBM Cognos Viewer. When I try and set the Communication with Other Portlets option, I get the error msg (screenshot attached)

The cogserver.log file has the following msg:

"172.16.33.4:9300 3648 2014-02-06 12:07:18.125 +5:30 MTswMTA6Yjk2ZDA3MWUtOGU2Yy0yMWEyLThiNzgtMDU1OWM2YjAwYmY5OjE4OTY4MzU4Njk7MDszOzA7 j8vCCjh8hqhsqv9dvydjd2q8G888sj4Ms9yysvMd   http-9300-13 portal 0 1 Audit..portal Request pf.fragment.validation.verifyfailed [failure details]value length is greater than maximum    maximum: 1024 length check failed    value length: 1108 string verify failed type verify failed parameter value verify failed    parameter value: p_reportLaunchOption=output&p_reportLaunchSubOption=run&p_promptOption=false&p_sharePromptValues=true&p_usePromptChannel=false&p_promptEventChannel=&p_matchOnParameterNameOnly...........................

Any suggestions/advice will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards
Dev

[bdbits]

This is off the top of my head, but... It appears the combination of the parameters being generated in the URL to account for your checkboxes plus the normal Cognos-added values is more than can be be handled by some component, I think the Cognos server in this case. The maximum allowed length from the cogserver message is 1024 characters. This would include the path portion i.e. http://yourhostname/blah/blah/blah, and Cognos is probably adding its own parameters as well as indicators for the checkboxes that have been selected. In normal forms processing the format is "&checkboxname=on" for each of the checked boxes.  So if the 57 checkbox names are long and you have a lot of them checked, I could see all of this adding up to more than 1024 characters.

Create a copy of the report and cut a significant number of checkbox prompts and try and use that. If it works then I would guess you may need to come up with shorter prompt names to fit the typical number selected within the URL length limit.

[xplorerdev]

Hi bdbits,

Honestly, I was literally banging my head yesterday, counting the letters  :'(

Actually you are right, there is some setting in this 10.2 server which is why its behaving like this. Also
1) The same report works fine on 10.2.0, when I change the prompt parameter names to p.parameter1, p.parameter2, p.parameter3..........p.parameter57 and the prompt names to parameter1, parameter2, ........., parameter57. This ways the number of characters are more than if I give specific names.
2) The same report works fine in 10.2.1, installed on another virtual machine.

I think I am gonna bang my head a little bit more when I return to office on Monday and see if if I could decode the issue.

Appreciate your advice.

Best Regards
Dev

[xplorerdev]

Hi bdbits,

My colleague raised a PMR with IBM and here is what IBM suggested:

This issue has been fix in more recent builds such like Cognos BI 10.2.1, however, for BI 10.2.0 this issue still exists.

Please consider the following steps in all your end user's Cognos servers:

1. Navigate to <Cognos_Installation>/webapps/p2pd/WEB-INF/fragments/producers/viewers/report folder.

2. Where you should see XML file named: implementation.xml

3. Open this file and search for term:    propsURL.

4. verify that you could reach to this section:

-----------------------------
     .................
     <val:name>propsURL</val:name>
     <val:rule>
                        <val:type>
                                                <val:string minLength="0" maxLength="1024" />
     .............
-----------------------------

Technically this symptom is caused by this limit of maximum Length in URL properties, we set it to 1024 as we expected customers not going to large for the number of prompts on portlets.

5. To helo resolve this issue, change 1024 to a bigger number, like 4096.

6. Restart Cognos services and confirm if now the issue is resolved.

Well, the issue got resolved after this.

Case Closed.

Best Regards
Dev

[MFGF]

Hi bdbits,

My colleague raised a PMR with IBM and here is what IBM suggested:

This issue has been fix in more recent builds such like Cognos BI 10.2.1, however, for BI 10.2.0 this issue still exists.

Please consider the following steps in all your end user's Cognos servers:

1. Navigate to <Cognos_Installation>/webapps/p2pd/WEB-INF/fragments/producers/viewers/report folder.

2. Where you should see XML file named: implementation.xml

3. Open this file and search for term:    propsURL.

4. verify that you could reach to this section:

-----------------------------
     .................
     <val:name>propsURL</val:name>
     <val:rule>
                        <val:type>
                                                <val:string minLength="0" maxLength="1024" />
     .............
-----------------------------

Technically this symptom is caused by this limit of maximum Length in URL properties, we set it to 1024 as we expected customers not going to large for the number of prompts on portlets.

5. To helo resolve this issue, change 1024 to a bigger number, like 4096.

6. Restart Cognos services and confirm if now the issue is resolved.

Well, the issue got resolved after this.

Case Closed.

Best Regards
Dev

Very useful! Thanks for sharing :)

MF.