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"Faulty Tennis Ball Machine"
There are ten tennis ball manufacturing machines. All but one manufacture the balls with exactly the same weight (100 gms each) . The faulty machine is manufacturing tennis balls with a weight of either 99 gms each or 101 gms each. You are allowed only one weighing to find the faulty machine and also tell if the faulty machine is manufacturing heavier balls or lighter balls.
How can you tell that?
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On May 24th we dropped our 2nd Geocaching Travel Bug into the wild. The " BSP Coin Bug" started its journey in Ocean City, MD and is on its way to the Seattle office. If it comes into your town please help it along its path! |
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| Greetings!
Welcome to this month's BSP Newsletter. We have a lot of educational content this month, along with some great tips and tricks and other IBM Cognos related information as always! And remember, we enjoy hearing your suggestions regarding the content you'd like to see. Please e-mail us at Newsletter@brightstarpartners.com if you have a topic you'd like to see discussed in future newsletters. |
REGISTER FOR IBM IOD / COGNOS FORUM |
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 Register for IBM IOD / Cognos Forum with BSP and Save (and Automatically be Entered to Win an Apple iPad)!
Update: In partnership with IBM, BSP is now offering a total savings of $400 by using the BSP preferred customer code below (and that's in addition to the chance to win an iPad)!
This year, IBM Cognos Forum will take place in Las Vegas from October 24-27. And it will be co-located with the IBM Information On Demand conference, so you'll receive more educational value than ever before. In order to receive your conference pass using BSP's registration code in order to save $400 and enter to win an iPad, follow these important steps:
- Visit the IBM Information On Demand / IBM Cognos Forum 2010 conference website and begin your registration.
- Input your information.
- Enter the BSP preferred customer code G10BSTAR in the "Promotion code" field on your registration
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| FREE VERSION CONTROL FOR FRAMEWORK MANAGER AND TRANSFORMER |
 Over the years, we've had numerous requests for information on how to version control Framework Manager Models and Transformer Models / Cubes. With the release of our Integrated Version Control, the frequency of requests has grown exponentially.
BSP's Integrated Version Control is designed to version content at the Studio level, as no commercial application can provide this functionality due to the fact that content within Cognos 8 web is stored in proprietary XML BLOBs within the Content Store.
With this being said, Framework Manager, Transformer and PowerPlay Cubes are all file based, and therefore well suited for versioning by various commercial and open source technologies.
BSP would like to highlight two free and open source methods of versioning FM and Transformer content. You can read our quick write-up here:
NOTE that these documents are to be used as a Quick Start reference for both technologies and are in no way officially supported by BSP. |
Cleaning up broken shortcuts & report views
This podcast demonstrates a number of MetaManager's features to find and eradicate broken shortcuts & Report Views. Some of the features demonstrated are: Saving searches and favorites in the portal tree for use across modules, the new save as favorite option in Report Validator, validating shortcuts & report views and fixing report views.
Please visit www.bspsoftware.com and register for a free account on the site. Once logged in, you can view this and other tips and techniques in the BSP Software Podcast Channel, located under Support >> Podcasts or by clicking http://www.bspsoftware.com/podcasts. |
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IBM COGNOS 8.4 POWERCUBE AUTOMATION |
 By Greg Jungels, Consultant
Although this article is geared specifically towards IBM Cognos 8.4, some information may also pertain to IBM Cognos 8.3.
- Still haven't made the leap from Series 7 Transformer to IBM Cognos 8.4 Transformer?
- Planning on doing so in the near future?
- Well, let's take a look at a couple 'gotchas' to help make the transition a bit smoother.
Command-Line Interface(CLI):
- As of version 8.3, the actual command has changed from trnsfrmr.exe to cogtr.exe.
- For the most part, the options have remained the same.
- Also, as of version 8.3, it is required that you run the CLI directly from the COGNOS_INSTALL\bin directory. What this means is that you have to code your scripts to change to the physical installation directory and run the CLI there
- Keep in mind that categories are always generated and saved to the ".pyj" model file.
- To avoid this, one option is to turn on the READ_ONLY attribute on the models (.pyj files).
- Another option is to copy the model to a temporary directory, build the cube against the model in the temporary directory, then delete the copied model.
- Add the steps directly to the scripts to turn on/off the READ_ONLY attribute, via the DOS attrib command, of the files before/after running the CLI.
- This way, if a user needed to open a model to make legitimate modifications, they wouldn't have to deal with setting/resetting the READ_ONLY attribute.
Upgrading "saved cube views"
- The last 'gotcha' has to do with "saved cube views."
Although provisions have been made to upgrade PowerPlay Reports (.ppr files), there is no way to upgrade these "saved cube views." - Yes, there are migration tools which make it easier to migrate these "saved cube views" to either Report Studio or Analysis Studio, but may not be what you want.
- You very well may want to open them in your "new" PowerPlay Studio*.
- Since PowerPlay Studio requires you to create/publish a package based on the PowerPlay Cube as a data source, there's no upgrade path for this.
- We ended up re-creating each "saved cube view" in the Content Store, manually.
Click here to read the complete article. |
TECHNIQUES FOR REPORT DEVELOPMENT IN SLOW ENVIRONMENTS |
By Angela Davis, Consultant
Developing reports in an environment that moves "slow", for various reasons, can be frustrating and extremely time consuming. As a report developer, what are your options?
There are some simple, creative techniques that may be applied to minimize the query time while developing reports within Report Studio that have many parts - like multiple queries, charts, lists, and crosstabs.
Add filters to the report
- Add a filter to the report, to be used for development only that significantly limits the number of rows returned. Remove this filter when you are reday to go prime time.
- Another filter is to add a subset of customers, products, accounts, etc. Choose a number that will provide enough information to validate calculations and show a rough layout of the final report.
Set the report studio report to use local cache
- This is a great option when working on the formatting of the final report and all queries and filters have been designed and are constant in values.
- There is a property of a query section in Report Studio to use the local cache.
Set the Report Studio queries to process concurrently
- This technique may help with performance during development and for execution of the final report by end users.
- There is a property of a query section in Report Studio to set the Execution Method to Concurrent.
For detailed steps with screen shots, click here |
 Wonders of Solar System......
Rings of Saturn
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You are cruising in the troposphere of Saturn under the most magnificent ring structure in the solar system. Few sights are more astounding. The white, icy rings soar 75,000 kilometers above your head. Ringshine illuminates everything around you. No fewer than six crescent moons rise in the sky. The light from the setting sun scatters against a mist of ammonia crystals, forming a beautiful sun dog. You are buffeted by ammonia clouds that stream by you at speeds greater than 1,500 kilometers an hour. These are some of the fastest winds in the solar system. More than 30,000 kilometers below you, with pressures no human-made thing could survive, is a global ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen. There will be no landing on this planet.
Jupiter's Red Spot
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The sheer scale of the solar system's largest anticyclone is difficult for a traveler to grasp. From this vantage point, only a small part of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (left) can be seen. It rises at least eight kilometers above the surrounding clouds. Lightning bolts that could pulverize a city crackle at its base into the lower clouds. Winds at the outer edge of the anticyclone swirl at more than 400 kilometers an hour. The spot rotates counterclockwise once every seven days. The turbulence created by this mega storm is brutal, the sound, deafening. At least two planets the size of Earth could fit inside this monstrous storm, which has been spinning in Jupiter's southern hemisphere for at least 400 years. There is no sign that it will stop.
Valles Marineris, Mars
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People have been known to fall to their knees and weep at the sight of Arizona's Grand Canyon. One wonders what the first traveler to the Mariner Valley will do when gazing into this canyon. At almost four miles deep and so wide that in some places you would have to strain to see the other side, this gigantic tectonic crack would span the U.S. from New York to California-a quarter of the way around the planet-so that sunrise at one end happens six or so hours before sunrise at the other. Water once ran through large segments of this expanse. In this image the traveler views an icy mist filling the valley as the suns sets over the north rim.
The Geysers of Enceladus
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You feel it before you see it: an ominous rumble, reverberating deep in your chest and up from your feet. There is no sound here. And then the eruption comes: two huge ice plumes explode through the surface of Enceladus, spewing ice crystals into space at more than 1,000 miles per hour. The silent violence is lit by our distant sun. With just 1/16 of our own moon's gravity, Enceladus will not be an easy world to tread on; hikers may need to strap on jetpacks and take care to avoid the valleys that give birth to the powerful geysers.
The Geysers of Triton
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Visitors to the largest of Neptune's moons, Triton, will be treated to an array of cryogeysers that are probably composed of nitrogen frost and dark organic compounds. The smoky-looking geysers might be heard from kilometers away as they stream more than 8,000 meters into the thin atmosphere before their tops are whisked away by prevailing winds. Methane and nitrogen ice cover this world whose surface temperature plummets to almost -200 degrees Celsius.
Peaks of Eternal Light
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Not far from home, on our own moon, a unique condition exists (below). Discovered in 1994 on Peary crater near the North Pole, the so-called peaks of eternal light are the only known region in the solar system where the sun never sets. (Other such regions may exist on Mercury but have not been seen yet.) This unusual condition arises because the moon's rotational axis is barely tilted relative to the plane of its and Earth's orbit around the sun. Certain to become a tourist attraction, this site may one day also house the first moonbase. Temperatures in the area fluctuate comparatively little, perhaps by 20 degrees, making it an ideal place to settle. The possibility of water ice here is an added bonus.
Herschel Crater on Mimas
- Adventurous climbers who ascend the peak at the center of Herschel crater (left) on Saturn's moon Mimas will find themselves more than 6,000 meters above the chasm's floor. Surrounded by the crater walls, which rise majestically to almost 5,000 meters, and with Saturn setting in the background, travelers might wonder how Mimas survived the impact that formed this 139-kilometer-wide depression, which is almost a third of the satellite's diameter.
Sunrise on Mercury
- Sunrise and sunset on Mercury are spectacles to behold. Two and one half times larger in the sky than seen on Earth, the sun appears to rise and set twice during a Mercurian day. It rises, then arcs across the sky, stops, moves back toward the rising horizon, stops again, and finally restarts its journey toward the setting horizon. These aerial maneuvers occur because Mercury rotates three times for every two orbits around the sun and because Mercury's orbit is very elliptical.
Next Month.... New Wonders..... |
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