Horizontal scroll bar for list with 3 columns Fixed

Hi Guys,

Below is a functionality that i am trying . A list with first 3 columns fixed and a scroll bar for remaining 20 columns.This can be achieved by using jquery UI .Data table functionality.

Will be updating details later

Difference between Linux and Unix

Hi Guys


Linux is free operating system whereas Unix is not free.To understand this completely we need to understand we need some basics below.

Linux have some version which cost some money.Unix does not have any free versions.Unix is used mainly for servers ( Solaris (oracle) ,AIX (IBM) are unix based OS.

Linux is Unix like operating system.Unix was developed by Bell labortories(those that gave you phone and transistor) and linux is based on similar structure so its called Unix like.


An operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs.For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware.

A Unix kernel — the core or key components of the operating system — consists of many kernel subsystems like process management, memory management, file management, device management and network management.

Its free - You get the code for kernel freely available apart from code from other stuff you can build your system on that

Popular example of systems built on linux are Android(For mobiles ).Red hat,Google chrome OS.

Some other points

Linux and unix are both know to be virus free hardly about 200 virus till date for both of them combined together

Unix OS is mainly used for servers , mainframes.There are different flavours of unix Solaris (Oracle) (Mostly being promoted for datacenters for clouds) ,AIX(IBM),and Apple OSX.

So what are flavours .We are not having ice Cream here ??.

The kernel remains the same and you can build on top of it as you like. Like for ice cream the base may be plain white milk and cream and you can add chocalate or strawberry flavour to it.

Linux for desktop pc.Mobiles (Androids)

Note:-They say using oracle solari as OS for datacentres(servers with oracle db will provide good scalability and great performance as its designed that way .

The black screen most datawarehousing guys see

Please remember telnet does not have a UI in unix .We use putty to connect to unix server(Solaris).For GUI to unix we can use WINSCP a free software.

Because we have command screen for telnet does not mean you have command screen for everything .It has a proper GUI only telnet is command screen.

Some other basic points


In 1969, UNIX was developed by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs and Dennis Ritchie. It was written in “C” language and was designed to be a portable, multi-tasking and multi-user system in a time-sharing configuration

Some Linux based OS

 Android,Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Debian, Archlinux, etc are all linux OS.Google chrome OS is linux based OS.

Some open source softwares

Many of open source softwares are Apache http sever ,JBOSS (its a application server like Apache but supports web services, and java beans), Mozilla , Mysql (database) .You can get the code for these things .


http://cognossimplified.blogspot.com/2013/08/linux-basics.html

Microstrategy for Cognos Developers

Hi Guys,

I am a Cognos developer.Recently i got a chance to make a POC in MSTR.It was for creation of dashboard.Below is my learning on how things are different and how to proceed

Disclaimer - These are my personal opinion based on my limited knowledge on MSTR.

Below are some screenshot of MSTR

Web MSTR  

(Its has a desktop installable Called MSTR Desktop which is not there in Cognos)

 

 Desktop in MSTR(Report Studio of Cognos)

MSTR Architect (Framework manager of Cognos)

Attributes in MSTR 

Prompts in MSTR

Cognos V/s Microstrategy

Hi Guys,

We have seen lot of post on web on Microstrategy V/S Cognos, Saying why Microstrategy is better and all that .Now recently i got a chance to make a POC in microstrategy .

In involves creation on dashboard in MSTR.So i learned a lot from that.What is different in MSTR from Cognos .How it works and What are some of feature missing in it from Cognos .

Disclaimer - Below thought are my personal opinion based on my limited Knowledge of MSTR.

I will also be posting a article titles .MSTR for Cognos developers .

Below are some of the points 

FM in Cognos <---> Architect in MSTR

Major Disadvantages

Issue 1

Architect assumes that you have a star schema model in your database from which you are making  your report.Consider you have OLTP system and you are making report on that it will be next to impossible to do so in MSTR without going for cubes

Now i am not in favour of cubes due to their maintainance issues. Cognos allows you do all types of join in FM very very easily .Consider simple left outer join.Its very difficult to achieve in MSTR.

Issue 2 

MSTR will create temporary tables in your schema.you need to have a schema where you have create table priviledges.So you should have Schema A from where you access your main schema B .Because in schema A you will need priviledges to create tables .

Whereas in cognos you do not require write priviledges on your schema .All optimisation is handled by cognos server .

So MSTR will suggest to go for Cubes in order to improve performance in case of large data.

Issue 3

MSTR has something called Free Form sql .It allows you to write your own sql.But that is also very limited.You can have prompts in this but it does not allow you to change prompt values once report is run.

Consider below scenario .You have a cognos report in which you have a prompt on report page and not on prompt page .Like product name .You want to change the product name once report is run to see a different product .

In MSTR you cant pass prompt value to SQL again now becaue it has already retrieved teh data.Only way to do this is to rerun the report.Very sad .


Issue 4 

MSTR cannot handle factless fact queries . In Datawarehousing a big disadvantage .Consider you need to pull data from two dimensions without involving any fact .Then you cant do it in MSTR without involving a fact

I wont say MSTR is great for making reports .But it has very Good Dashboarding Capabilityand i am assuming that you are using cubes are source for those  dashboards.Good performance and a Lot of options


Now having said this Some Good points on MSTR

1) Its the King of dashboarding .Cognos has a limited dashboarding capability.Panels are fixed.In MSTR you can actually draw your dashboard how you want it like in paint.

2) It has lot of widgets for dashboard Fisheye , Timelines .Those capabilities are not there in cognos dashboards



I will continue to update more points as i come across .Do read my post on Microstrategy for Cognos developers .Explains components in MSTR and their Counterparts in Cognos

1) Bullet chart not available directly in MSTR.Need to do a lot of formating to make them appear as bullets

2) Left outer joins are not availabel directly in architect.

3) Does not do any server processing

4)Creates tables in oracle schema intermediate tables you should have create priviledges

5) The way it handles factless fact queries.If a fact is not there in a query it will give a crossjoin

6) you cannot have a prompt on report page .All prompts have to submitted before a report is run .you cant do any prompt based filtering once report is run 

Difference between Apache and Apace tomcat

Hi Guys,

Apache and Apache Tomcat are two different servers.

Apache server is used for static HTML content ,means someone else does the processing.Like you have cognos application server which does the processing of reports and sends html content to apache for displaying .It is not a java virtual machine (JVM)

So what is virtual machine .Consider you have windows on your laptop and you want to run a program which runs only in unix .Now you dont want to install 2 separate OS on your machine .So you install a program which lets you install one more OS .So it will be like a separate pop up in which you see a different OS.so you have windows and in that VMware in that unix .

Most cloud based machines use virtual machines.

So Coming back to JVM  (sorry for deviating from topic)

So JVM is a environment where you can run your java code which you cant run directly on windows because it does not have the files so you either dowload JRE in programs running on windows ( Java run time environment) or for web based have a web server which has JVM like apache tomcat. 

Hide List or Crosstab using Jquery

Hi Guys ,

Below is the sample script to use .For more details on using jquery with Cognos please go through my other post which gives you the basics

My best explaination on jquery below link

Cognossimplified Jquery

Basic steps 

1) create a list 
2) Take 2 html items one at starting of list and one at ending of list 

You can refer to IBM site 

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ba-pp-reporting-advanced-report-design-page647/



<form>
<input type="radio" id ="list" name="sex" value="male">List
<input type="radio" id ="Crosstab" name="sex" value="female">Crosstab
</form>

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>

var bb = jQuery.noConflict();

bb(document).ready(function(){
      bb("#list").click(function(){
      alert();

bb("#abc").toggle();


  });
});
</script>

How to burst report to directories in cognos

Hi Guys,

I have done a lot of report bursting using diff techniques but never tried this.

This document describes how to burst a report to directory entries (like Roles, Groups, Contacts or Distribution lists).

Below are the steps i got from IBM site

1. Create a distribution list in Cognos Connection and add recipients.
2. Get the CAMID from the search path of the distribution list.

Instead of createing a distribution list if you already have a group or role just take that get its CAMID and put in data item.The report will burst for all users in that grop.

1. In the report's query add a data item with the CAMID in single quotes in it.
2. Group the column that will be used as a burst group in the burst option for the report.
3. Setup the burst option and make sure the burst recipient type is set to directory entries.