Proclarity visualisations included in AdCenter Analytics

Check out the screenshots here. Anyone who's familiar with Proclarity or PerformancePoint will recognise the Heat map (or "Tree Map" in AdCenter parlance - confusingly, Heat Map seems to refer to something else again).

I understand this particular visualisation won't be in the first release.

Since AdCenter Analytics is free, I trust this means that CALs will no longer be required to view Proclarity visualisations used in PerformancePoint solutions? (Somehow I suspect MS begs to differ on that point).

I'm pretty late to this news, and frankly it's because enterprise and soho/consumer analytics are poles apart. For what it's worth, I couldn't find anyone else out there who has commented on this either.

I considered signing up to the AdCenter Analytics beta but it looks like they'll only invite people with sites that have a bare minimum of 25000 page views a month. I have only had (google) analytics enabled for a week now, but with some optimistic extrapolation I might be racking up a mighty 500 or so...

Use Oracle install defaults if you want a crap character set

My big lesson with Oracle installations:

• Never install a starter database
• Never "next through" the default options when creating a database

This is because the default character set is usually something like WE8MSWIN1252, but a lot of apps require Unicode these days.

These default character sets are never strict subsets of Unicode character sets and consequently require a lengthy migration process to convert to something like AL32UTF8.

Instead use the Database Configuration Assistant to create your database, and make sure you select something suitable on the Character Sets tab.

I'm fully aware that best practice is to work through a 10 page checklist to tick off all the prerequisites, but sometimes life's just too short.

Out of Disk Space with VMWare Player and Virtual Disk Mount

My mounted vmdk file wouldn't accept any more contents - out of disk space. All the instructions I found for increasing the disk space required VMWare Workstation or Server.

I really really really didn't want to install these. Unfortunately I really really really had to.

I followed the instructions as per http://www.leonmeijer.nl/archive/2007/05/07/25.aspx

This type of maintenance is totally unnecessary with Virtual PC. What's worse, VMWare have made it very command-liney to do.

Enabling Shared Folders in VMWare Player

Add this to the .vmx file

sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.hostPath = "C:\"
sharedFolder0.guestName = "C"
sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"
sharedFolder.maxNum = "1"

Installing Business Objects on Windows Server 2003

Hit an error during BO XI R2 install at the CMS Log On step:

Unable to log on to the CMS.

The install was unable to log on to the CMS. Please ensure that your User Name and Password are correct, and try again.

I attempted to use the local Administrator login but the solution I found out there is to use a blank password!

Infoview comes up with

The XML page cannot be displayed

Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A name was started with an invalid character. Error processing resource 'http://servername/businessobjects/enterprise115/In...
<%@ Register TagPrefix="ce" Namespace="CrystalDecisions.Enterprise.WebControls" Assembly="CrystalDecisions.Enterprise.Web...

The problem appears to be that IIS did not have a default dotnet version selection before the BOXI setup. There seemed to be nothing I could do to repair the situation - I had to reinstall BOXI after setting the dotnet version as follows:

• Open IIS Manager
• Right-click Default Web Site and select Properties
• Select the ASP.NET tab
• Select an ASP.NET version in the dropdown and click OK

Cognos Oracle Content Store Creation

Cognos "Quick" Start Installation and Configuration Guide transcript

Error: Cognos Configuration error creating new data store

Database connection failed
Content Manager failed to start because it could not load driver "oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"

This went away when I copied classes12.jar from ORACLE_HOME\jdbc\lib to c8_location\webapps\p2pd\WEB-INF\lib

Error: Cognos Configuration error creating new data store #2

Content Manager is unable to initialize the content store by using the initialization file "C:\Program Files\cognos\c8\configuration\schemas\content\oracle\dbInitTest_oracle.sql"

It appears the Schema user has insufficient privileges. I have given the following:

Roles

• Connect

System Privileges

• Alter any procedure, sequence, table, trigger
• Create any procedure, sequence, table, trigger, view
• Delete any table
• Drop any procedure, sequence, table, trigger, view
• Insert any table
• Update any table

When I execute the script in SqlPlus the error is ORA-01950: no privileges on tablespace 'X'. Apparently this means no quota has been allocated for this user.

I attempted to grant unlimited quota on all tablespaces but got an error ORA-30041: Cannot grant quota on the tablespace. I forgot that the temp table space doesn't have a quota, so I was a bit more specific in my selection.

Error: Cognos Configuration error creating new data store #3

Content Manager cannot start because the database character set for the content store is not supported. Before you restart Content Manager, you may need to recreate the content store database or clean it using dbClean_*.sql.

Following the instructions regarding character set, I found NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET = AL16UTF16. Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be sufficient. SELECT NLS_CHARACTERSET FROM NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS returned WE8MSWIN1252. Some guidance on changing character set is that it's safest to export-create new db-import.

My steps for export are:

• Bring up Database Control
• Select Maintenance tab
• Select Export to Export Files
• Select Database and enter OS admin user and password
• (Create the export folder before doing the next step)
• Create Directory Object, enter name and folder path and select OK
• Select the name of the newly created dir object from Directory Object dropdown and select Next
• Select the dir object again and select Next
• Enter a job name and description and select Next
• Select Submit

The job kicked off but produced some errors saying it couldn't find the export directory object. Makes no sense to me, I thought I would just try and sneak on by.

I created a new instance with Database Configuration Assistant using character set AL32UTF8 and tried to import the export files into it but I hit a lot of errors.

I decided to use a separate instance just for Cognos. Phew, I could finally connect ok to the Content Database.

Cognos 8 Cryptographic Services

Copied c8_location\bin\jre\version\lib\ext\bcprov-jdk13-125.jar to java_home\lib\ext. I have no idea if this has to be done but I did it anyway.

Starting the Service

Selected Root node in Cognos Configuration and Action:Test. All came back good except mail server which I don't care about for the moment. Selected Action:Start which was also successful.

Getting the web server to respond

Created virtual directory for cognos8 at c8_location\. Worked through the IE settings and browsed to http://localhost/cognos8. 404 Page not found. Trawled around on web and found that I could Allow All Unknown CGI Extensions in IIS Web Extensions. This time I got 403 Not authorised to view this page.

Figured out that I didn't read the instructions correctly - there are 2 nested virtual directories.

• cognos8 points to c8_location\webcontent
• cgi-bin points to c8_location\cgi-bin. Created by right-clicking the previously created cognos8 virtual directory

At last it works! The Framework Manager install was straightforward after this.

OWB - table upsert mapping

Error:

VLD-2750: Missing update matching criteria in YOUR_DIM Match by Constraint is set to all constraints or a specific constraint for YOUR_DIM, then all mapped attributes of this constraint will be included in the WHERE clause in the UPDATE statement. If there is no constraint on the target, or none of the constraint attributes are mapped, set Match by Constraint to no constraints for YOUR_DIM, and define the match condition on the attributes of the target

Solution excerpted from Oracle forums:

When you use a surrogate key (eg. generated with a sequence, presumably for
a slowly changing dimension) you also have to define a unique natural key on
your target table, and use the natural key for matching/updating.

If you change your target table columns or constraints after the operator
was put on the mapping canvas, there is a possibility that OWB doesn't change
the "Loading Properties" correspondingly. To fix this;

1) first finish up your constraints work, then
2) set operator property "Match by constraint" to "No constraints", then
3) check column attribute properties "Loading Properties" for all
columns;
a) columns being part of the unique natural key should have "Load column when
Updating Row" set to "No", other columns should normally have this property set
to "Yes"

b) the "Match Column ...." properties should be set to "Yes" if part of the
natural key, "No" otherwise

c) "Load column when Inserting Row" should normally be "Yes".

4) Finally, you can change the operator property "Match by constraint" from
"No constraints" to your natural key