Usage stats

[dougp]

Is there a reliable way to identify if content is being used?

I have about 19,500 reports in my environment.  I can't believe that all of that is useful.  I thought I had identified all content that had not been used in a very long time.  I wrote a query against the audit database that looked for...

• reports, report views, and dashboards that had been used interactively or on a schedule
• reports that are a dependency for a report view that had been used interactively or on a schedule
• reports that are a dependency for a history (output) that had been viewed

...that had not been used in a very long time.


Then I started deleting unused reports.



Apparently, I was wrong.


I can see in the "past usage" part of Cognos Administration that some reports on my list are scheduled.  I know from talking to folks in the business units that the outputs of these scheduled reports have definitely been viewed recently.

COGIPF_RUNREPORT and COGIPF_VIEWREPORT together don't cover all of these cases.  In fact, using COGIPF_ACTION and using some magic spells I learned from a level 18 mage doesn't appear to accurately depict all usage of report outputs (static versions stored in Cognos as PDF, Excel, etc.).

Is there a reliable way to identify if a report has been used directly, as a report view, on a schedule, or its saved output has been accessed?

[dougp]

Most of my logging is set to "Basic".  Audit logging level for query service is "Request".

Most folks tell me I'm doing too much logging.  I think I have been misled.

[dougp]

As a workaround, I created a query that tells me when a schedule is scheduled and attributed each scheduled time as a usage to the associated report or report view.

Determine the usage counts for the reports, dashboards, and report views.
For schedules, assume 1 run (based on the schedule, not an actual, logged run) = 1 usage
Attribute schedule "usage" to the report or report view.
Attribute report view usage to the report.

Now I think I have what I need.  Interesting SQL exercise, but frustrating that I can't get this directly from the audit system.