How to Validate a Cognos report in debug mode ( element-by-element or step-by-step)

Question

We recently migrated from Cognos 10.1.1 to Cognos 10.2.1.1 ( 10.2.1 plus Fix pack1) . Some of our existing reports fail validation now.

From the cogserver.log file , it looks like the BIBUS Process is Crashing on validating the report. We are working with IBM tech support via a PMR .

Wanted to try if someone here knows if it is possible to Validate a report step by step so that I can get some information or some logs on what element in our report is exactly causing the issue? i.e. Is it possible to do the report validation in a debug mode somehow?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there's no way to debug step by step. Finally got the Core dumps for the crashes, sent them over to IBM Folks ; and they identified it as a known bug in 10.2.1.1. So now we are at 10.2.1.2 (applied Fix pack 2) which solves the issue.

Answer 2

Oh, what a wonderful feature that would be, but to my knowledge nothing like that exists at all. You could try setting the logging on your dispatcher(s) to the maximum to see if you can get any more informative errors.

I would start by trying to view the tabular data for each query individually. If you can identify which query (or queries) are causing your problems, then you can just remove items from the query until it doesn't fail, at which point you should have a pretty good idea of what the source of the problem is.

If that doesn't work, I would just start ripping major chunks of the report out and seeing you can get it to run. For example, if you have a report with 4 charts, delete half of them and try your report. Revert back to the original report, and delete the other half. Get it to work, and then start removing stuff from the half that fails until you can narrow it down to your problem.

It's kind of slow, but these approaches have always worked for me.

On a side note, we're about to make the same upgrade, I'd be interested in hearing what you learn.

EDIT: Oh, forgot. Make sure you disable DQM and test your reports that way, if you haven't.