IBM Cognos Technical Blog

Having spent quite some time trying to figure out why our installation of TM1 Contributor would not work when using IBM Cognos 10 Integrated Security we figured it may be worth a blog entry to make sure that others coming across this problem don’t run into the same issues.

There are a number of steps involved with getting the installation up and running but first, lets just outline the server topology.

• 1x 32-bit BI Server (Gateway, Application Tier and Content Manager) with TM1 Portlets and TM1 Web and TM1 Contributor installed.
• 1x 64-bit TM1 Application Server (Running as a TM1 Admin Server and also hosting the individual TM1 Servers)
• 1x SQL Server hosting the Content Store database and miscellaneous other databases not directly related to the install.

We are assuming here that you can (and have) installed the different IBM Cognos products correctly and are now focussing on integrating these products.

Enabling IBM Cognos Security on the TM1 Server

On your TM1 Application Server you will have a number of TM1 Servers such as the Planning Sample TM1 Server.  Each TM1 Server has a file called tm1s.cfg that contains parameters used during the startup of your TM1 Server.  An example file is below:

# Security mode
## If IntegratedSecurityMode is set to 1. All clients must provide a database
# username and password. This is traditionally done through a login screen.
## If IntegratedSecurityMode is set to 2. The clients will have the choice
# to connect provide a database username and password or use the single-login
# mechanism for authentication.
## If IntegratedSecurityMode is set to 3. All clients must use the single-login
# mechanism for authentication.
## If this is not set the parameter will be set to 1 by default.
# GroupsCreationLimit
## Note: The GroupsCreationLimit server configuration parameter pre-allocates
# memory and should not be set higher than needed. Please see TM1 technical
# bulletin: GroupsCreationLimit Recommendations for more information on
# how this parameter works.
[TM1S]ServerLogging=F
SecurityPackageName=Kerberos
IntegratedSecurityMode=5
UseSSL=T
ServerName=Planning Sample
DataBaseDirectory=C:\Program Files\Cognos\TM1\Custom\TM1Data\PlanSamp\
AdminHost=TM1952
PortNumber=12345
Language=ENG
SaveTime=
DownTime=
ProgressMessage=True
AuditLogOn=F
AuditLogMaxFileSize= 100 MB
AuditLogUpdateInterval=60
PersistentFeeders=F
ParallelInteraction=F
ServerCAMURI=http://bi101:9300/p2pd/servlet/dispatch
ClientCAMURI=http://bi101/ibmcognos/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll
ClientPingCAMPassport=900
#Optional CAM parameters
#CAMSSLCertificate=
#CAMSSLCertRevList=
#SkipSSLCAMHostCheck=TRUE
#CAMPortalVariableFile=portal\variables_plan.xml

To enable IBM Cognos 10.1 BI Integrated Security we need to change the value of "IntegratedSecurityMode" from 1 to 5.

Also by default the “ServerCAMURI”, “ClientCAMURI” and  ”ClientPingCAMPassport” values are commented out.  These need to be given the values for your server which can be obtained from IBM Cognos Configuration.

The TM1 Server will need to be restarted to pick up these values.

More detailed information on setting up the integrated security can be found here:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/page413.html

Installing the TM1 Portlets

The TM1 Portlets are used to provide integration between TM1 Web and IBM Cognos Connection, these are available as a separate download “TM1Portlets_10.1_mp.tar.gz” – the full list of part numbers is here:

Once extracted and installed using the usual IBM Cognos InstallStream installer you will need to move around and edit some files as follows: -

From the location C:\Program Files\Cognos\TM1\Cadmin\gateway take the files

pmpsvc.war -> c:\Program Files\IBM\Cognos\c10\webapps

planning.html -> c:\Program Files\IBM\Cognos\c10\webcontent

variables_plan.xml -> c:\Program Files\IBM\Cognos\c10\templates\ps\portal

Once the files are moved in to place we need to perform some actions upon them.

pmpsvc.war

This file has been copied into the IBM Cognos 10 webapps folder, if the IBM Cognos 10.1 BI service is running it will automatically be extracted and loaded into memory.  This forms the TM1 Contributor Web Application and is now running into the bundled Tomcat instance.  It can also be deployed manually to another instance of Tomcat if you so choose.

planning.html

This file needs to be edited to contain the path to your PMPSVC application.  By default the file has the following line:

// Update the following to point to the location of the planning service(s)

var planningServices = ["http://localhost:8080"];

We must change the path to one that is correct for your installation such as:

// Update the following to point to the location of the planning service(s)

var planningServices = ["http://YOUR-BI-SERVER.DOMAIN.COM:9300"];

Be sure to get this exactly right as this is something that caught us out during our first installation.  Due to a number of other errors we were troubleshooting at the time we ended up with the “/pmpsvc” added to the end of the URL.  This is very bad and will result in the following error:

The planning service parameter was not specified or is not one of the configured locations

variables_plan.xml

This file does not need to be edited, the default file as below is correct and works out of the box:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<CRNenv>

	<urls>

		  <url>../planning.html</url>

 	</urls>

</CRNenv>

variables_tm1.xml.sample

This file already exists in the c:\Program Files\IBM\Cognos\c10\temlates\ps\portal folder but needs to be renamed to “variables_tm1.xml” and it also needs to be edited.  The default file looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<CRNenv>

	<urls>

<url>

		<url>http://tm1webhostname/tm1web/tm1weblogin.aspx</url>

		<url>http://tm1webhostname/tm1web/tm1webloginhandler.aspx</url>

		<url>http://tm1webhostname/tm1web/tm1webmain.aspx</url>

</url>

	</urls>

	<cookies>

		<param name="cam_passport"/>

	</cookies>

</CRNenv>

One thing to look out for is that in our initial installation there was an extra set of <url></url> tags that had to be removed.  They are shown in red in the file above, these were not correct.

To ensure that TM1 Web is working correctly we need to add in all the permutations of the three URL’s above.  Namely using the NETBIOS name and the full DNS name of the servers as well as and DNS aliases that my may have set up.

In our test server setup we had the following as an example:

<url>http://bi101.planitcpm.local/TM1Web/TM1WebMiniLogin.aspx</url>

<url>http://bi101.planitcpm.local/TM1Web/TM1WebLoginHandler.aspx</url>

<url>http://bi101.planitcpm.local/TM1Web/TM1WebMain.aspx</url>

<url>http://bi101/TM1Web/TM1WebMiniLogin.aspx</url>

<url>http://bi101/TM1Web/TM1WebLoginHandler.aspx</url>

<url>http://bi101/TM1Web/TM1WebMain.aspx</url>

Restart the services

With these files copied into place and edited correctly you should restart the IBM Cognos 10 service so that the new files are picked up.

Initialising the TM1 Contributor Web Application

We need to set the parameters for the TM1 Contributor application now, to do this navigate to the URL set up earlier, e.g. http://servername.domain.com:9300/pmpsvc/ – assuming this is the first time you have run this it will redirect automatically to the initialize.jsp page as shown below:

Ensure that you get all of the correct URL’s in the fields and also be sure to put the the DNS name for your TM1 Admin Server into the Admin Host field as it defaults to the local machine and won’t list any of your TM1 Servers.

The TM1 installation and IBM Cognos Business Intelligence will now be integrated.