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Techniques for Managing the Application Lifecycle of Your

IBM Cognos Deployment

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Agenda•Upgrade Questions and Upgrade Workflow•Introduction to Lifecycle Manager

• How it works• Type of comparisons• Supported environments• Demo

•Application Lifecycle and Lifecycle Manager•What’s In the Labs

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The Upgrade

•Reason to upgrade• Business and Users

– New Features– New Functionality

• Architecture/Hardware/Software upgrades• Issues with current release• Stay current

•Challenges with upgrading• Process unknowns• Lengthy upgrades costs• Time to evaluate reports

– Reports won’t work– Fixing reports

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Report Upgrade Questions•Report Validation

• Manual process• Time consuming• Many unknowns

•What do we test?• Sample of reports?• All reports?• Impossible to test prompted reports!

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Upgrade - Workflow

Lifecycle Manager

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Introduction to Lifecycle Manager

•Helps you manage the validation of report content by providing a workflow•Validates reports by comparing their output

• Any supported output format• Any supported language• Types of reports:

– Report Studio– Query Studio– Analysis Studio

•Easily configurable to many environments•Allows you to easily benchmark and retest once issues are identified and fixed

Reduce the time it takes to validate a large volume of reports during the upgrade process

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How Lifecycle Manager Works

•Queries the source system for content• You choose what folders/packages to compare content• Public content only

•Run Reports• Runs reports without user interaction• Generates prompts automatically• Prompt values can be manually input • Prompt can be run to get value(s)

•Reports are run on source and target systems•Lifecycle Manager retrieves output locally•Projects are saved with all configuration values for future validations

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Lifecycle Manager Workflow•Create your project

• Enter Configuration parameters•Generate Report List

• Connect to the source system and choose packages or folders•Validate/Execute the source

• Mark items out of scope if you do not wish them to be included• Generate prompt values where required

•Validate/Execute the target• Prompt values are carried forward

•Comparison and analysis• Create comments/notes with report objects when required

•Choose to Fix or approve reports• Re execute target for further analysis

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Output Comparison Options•Built in comparisons

• Automatic comparison• Visual comparison options

•Output Compare Tool• Side by side compare• Text/data compare

•PDF Flash Output Compare• Side by side compare• Overlay compare• Text/data compare

•CSV and XML automatic output comparison•Other outputs offer a visual comparison

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Testcase for Customer Support•Archive Function

• Needs to be enabled• Creates zip files of source and target environment

•Files Archived• Requested output• reportSpec.xml• validationSql.xml• modelSpec.xml• Logs directory• Versions

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Supported Environments•Lifecycle Manager is a Windows only tool•Lifecycle Manager supports the following source to target environments:

• IBM ReportNet® 1.1 MR3 or MR4 to IBM Cognos 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 and IBM Cognos v10.1

• IBM Cognos 8.2 to IBM Cognos 8.2, 8.3, or 8.4and IBM Cognos v10.1• IBM Cognos 8.3 to IBM Cognos 8.3.x or 8.4and IBM Cognos v10.1• IBM Cognos 8.4.x to IBM Cognos 8.4.x and IBM Cognos v10.1

•Source and target operating systems• Window• Any flavor of Unix/Linux

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Topology•Lifecycle Manager is a standalone application•Tomcat JVM•Browser based UI•Access required to both environments

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Lifecycle Manager Demo

View the demo here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Dd9XOjeyE

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Tasks Validation ExecutionComparison

NotesExecution Times

Task Summary and Stats

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Application Lifecycle and Lifecycle Manager

•Thinking about other uses for Lifecycle Manager?• It is a tool with many uses

•2 types of projects• Quickly validates so that you can promote Reports, Packages,

Folders within same version environments

•Ex: DEV → QA → Production• Benchmark Projects

•FP, SP and Interim fixes•Report execution times•Upgrading

• Environment tuning•Load testing and performance

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Lifecycle Manager Summary•Helps in the upgrade process by validating report content•Easily configurable to many environments•Quickly validates large volumes of reports, including prompted reports•Allows you to easily retest once issues are identified•Task Summary and Statistics•Testcase for Customer Support easily created using the Archival functionality

•Benchmarking project helps with Fix Packs, Service Packs and Interim fixes

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Information and Analytics Communities•On-line communities, User Groups, Technical Forums, Blogs, Social networks, and more

• Find a community that interests you at…– ibm.com/software/data/community

•Information Champions • Recognizing individuals who have made the most outstanding

contributions to Information Management communities

– ibm.com/software/data/champion

http://www.ibm.com/software/data/communityhttp://www.ibm.com/software/data/communityhttp://www.ibm.com/software/data/championhttp://www.ibm.com/software/data/champion

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Techniques for Managing the Application Lifecycle of Your IBM Cognos Deployment �AgendaThe UpgradeReport Upgrade QuestionsSlide 4Introduction to Lifecycle ManagerHow Lifecycle Manager WorksLifecycle Manager WorkflowOutput Comparison OptionsTestcase for Customer SupportSupported EnvironmentsTopologyLifecycle Manager DemoTask Summary and StatsApplication Lifecycle and Lifecycle ManagerLifecycle Manager SummaryInformation and Analytics CommunitiesDisclaimer