mydwbi blog

HOW TO: Achieve High Availability for Web Services Hub in the event of a failover

lynx286 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:33:41 +0800

Solution

Using High Availability for Web Services Hub, a client application can access the Web Service even in the event of failover of the Web Service to another node (when the URL changes). To achieve this, use either of the following:

Third party load balancer
Sample third party load balancers provided by Informatica (used only for test environment)

Third party load balancer

In the Administration Console, provide the HubLogicalAddress in the Advance properties of the Web Services Hub. For the HubLogicalAddress, provide the URL of the third party load balancer that manages the Web Services Hub. This URL is published in the WSDL for all Web Services that run on a Web Services Hub managed by the load balancer.

With a load balancer, the client application sends a request to the load balancer and the load balancer routes the request to an available Web Services Hub. Any of the Web Services Hub services can process requests from the client application. The load balancer does not verify that the host names and port numbers given for the Web Services Hub services are valid or that the services are running.

Before you send requests through the load balancer, ensure that the Web Service Hub services are available.

Some of the third party load balancers that can be used (available on the Web) are Apache tcpmon and Apache jmeter.

Sample third party load balancers provided by Informatica

Informatica provides sample third party load balancers (used only for test environment). This can be used to understand the usage of load balancer with web Services Hub. This sample third party load balancer is present at infa_home/server/samples/WebServices/samples/SoftwareLoadBalancer.

Before using load balancer, read the Readme.txt file which is present in the same path. This guides you on:

How does the load balancer work
How to set up the Configuration File that is used by the load balancer

Note

Informatica third party load balancers can be used only for test environment and not for production environment.

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HOW TO: Disable the XMLW_31213 error messages in the PowerCenter

lynx286 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:28:41 +0800

Problem Description

The following error is in session log:

Error XMLW_31213 : Row rejected due to duplicate primary key.

Data is written correctly to target, but above error will appear multiple times in session log and it will grow to very large size. Is there away to stop this message from being written to the session log?

Solution

In order to fix the issue do the following:

Select Integration Service in the Administration Console
Go to Properties > Configuration Properties >
Click Edit
Clear the XMLWarnDupRows option.

More Information

Setting the custom property XMLWarnDupRows to “NO” will not resolve this issue as it has been replaced by the XMLWarnDupRows Integration Service property.

To use the option on PowerCenter 8.5.1 install the latest HotFix.

Reference

PowerCenter Administrator Guide > “Creating and Configuring the Integration Service” > “Configuring the Integration Service Properties” > “Configuration Properties” > “Table 9-6. Configuration Properties for an Integration Service”

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How to create a Time Dimension in Framework Manager

lynx286 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:09:29 +0800

Description:
This document describes how to create a Time Dimension in Framework Manager which is similar to a Time Dimension created in Powerplay Transformer.

Steps:

Right-click on the Namespace and choose Create->Regular Dimension.

From Available Items drag the date column and drop it under Hierarchies.

Click the ellipsis in Source field to open Calculation Definition windows.

Change the name of the calculation to Year.

Use ‘cast’ and ‘extract’ functions to extract the years from the date column and convert it to character string, e.g.:
cast(extract ( year, [].[].[] ) , char(8))

Back in the Dimension Definition windows, click the ellipsis in the Role field.

Assign _businessKey and _memberCaption roles.

Under Hierarchies, Add Levels for Month and Day.

Repeat the steps 3-7 for the Month and Day using expressions:
cast(extract ( month, [].[].[] ) , char(8))
cast(extract ( day, [].[].[] ) , char(8))

Note:
‘cast’ function has to be used to convert a numeric field to a string as _memberCaption Role cannot be numeric.

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How To: Generate multiple worksheets from Report Studio

lynx286 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:51:40 +0800

Description:
How to generate multiple worksheets in excel from a report studio page

Environment:
Windows [All]

Solution:
Use grouping on a query item in the page break to generate separate excel worksheets

Steps:
1. Create a list report
2. Group on a query item in the list report
3. Open the page explorer and click on pages
4. Add a page break using the grouped query item
5. Run the report to generate an XLS output

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How to publish a package after modifying the model without impacting existing reports

lynx286 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:46:25 +0800

Description:

How to publish a package after modifying the model without impacting existing reports based on that package.

Solution:

This is essentially a question about how model versioning works.

If you want all your old reports to still work fine after changing a model, you need to enable model versioning when you publish the package in Framework Manager. With this option checked, ReportNet (or Cognos will create a new version of the model for this package in the content store, instead of overwriting the existing model.

Once done, the published package will have multiple versions of the model in the content store. All old reports will automatically link to the old model, and all new reports will be created against the new model.

Please be aware, however, that if you open an existing report from within the Studios, it will run against the newest model. There may be a validation prompt, and it may result in error messages becasue the old report may not match the metedata of the newest model.

Steps:
1. Check Enable model versioning in Framework Manager in the package publishing wizard.
2. Publish the package.

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How To: Change to a new Directory Server

lynx286 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:38:35 +0800

Description:

How to change to a new Directory Server

Steps:

A) Before changing the Directory Server:
- set a Master Password in IBM Cognos Finance
(this is a safe guard only, you shouldn’t need to use it; you will only need to use it if you have problems logging back on to Finance after changing your Directory Server)
- Export your existing Access Manager Directory Server information to an .LAE file (select the Option to “Empty the target namespace”)

B) Install SunOne Directory Server on the new Server

C) After the install of the Directory Server, on the new Server :
- update Configuration Manager with this new information (ie new Directory Server SunOne details)
- within Configuration Manager, “Services”, “Access Manager”, “General” - answer “Yes” to “Are you sure that you want to configure this directory server?”
- within Configuration Manager - do a Validate / Apply / Start Services - ensure that there are no errors
- update Access Manager Administration with this new information (ie new Directory Server SunOne details):
i) create a Directory Server Namespace
ii) import the .LAE file from the old server into the new Directory Server Namespace (select the Option to “Empty the target namespace”)
- within Access Manager, Tools, use “Runtime Configuration” to reestablish your authentication source to the new Directory Server

D) Every Finance Windows (non-Web) user will need to run Access Manager - Configuration Wizard (Start, Programs, Finance, Tools) to update their Access Manager authentication source

You may not want to wipe the existing Directory Server until you have confirmed all is OK using the new server.

If you have a different Finance application server from a Finance Web server then you will need to perform the Access Manager, Tools, use “Runtime Configuration” to reestablish your authentication source on the Finance Web server too.

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How to convert a numeric value to character string padded with zeros at left hand side

lynx286 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:30:50 +0800

Description:

This document provides an example of how a numeric value can be converted to a character string and padded with zeros at the left hand side. There is no direct function to pad character strings on the left or right with a specific character.

Environment:

This technique has been tested against SQL Server 2000 database but it should work for all the other databases.

Solution:

Edit the Query Subject that the padded character string have to be added to it and create a calculated column with the following definition:

replace(str ( ,),’ ‘, )

Example to pad with zeros at the left in a 4 character long character:

replace(str ([gosales_goretailers].[Orders].[Quantity] ,4),’ ‘,’0′)

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HOW TO: Use “Is_Null” and “Not Is_Null” functions with Rule Based Analyzer Component in Data Quality

lynx286 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:49:08 +0800

Description
In Data Quality, is there a way to use the Is_Null and Not Is_Null function with the Rule Based Analyzer Component?

Solution
There is no direct way to use Is_null or Not Is_null function in the Rule Based Analyzer Component. However, you do the following to achieve the same:

equal to “”:

Example
For Is_null, use the following:

IF (value1 = “”) THEN
Value2 := 0

For Not Is_Null, use the following:

IF (value1 <> “”) THEN
Value2 := 0

Applies To
Data Quality

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HOW TO: Read an unstructured binary file and load it to an Oracle BLOB column

lynx286 — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:31:49 +0800

Solution
PowerCenter does not support reading or writing unstructured binary files such as image (” .jpg “, ” .bmp “) files or compressed (” .zip “) files.

Workaround:
Use an Oracle Stored Procedure and call the stored procedure in the mapping as post\pre target load or post session command of any session.

Example:
The following is a stored procedure which uses the DBMS_LOB package to read and load a .zip file into an Oracle database:

***************
create table demo
( id int primary key,
theBlob blob
)
/
create or replace directory my_files as ‘/export/home/tkyte/public_html’;
declare
l_blob blob;
l_bfile bfile;
begin
insert into demo values ( 1, empty_blob() )
returning theBlob into l_blob;
l_bfile := bfilename( ‘MY_FILES’, ‘test.zip’ );
dbms_lob.fileopen( l_bfile );
dbms_lob.loadfromfile( l_blob, l_bfile,
dbms_lob.getlength( l_bfile ) );
dbms_lob.fileclose( l_bfile );
end;
/
More Information

The following are key points to consider when working with Binary Large Objects (LOBs) in Oracle:

Internal LOBs associate with the transaction model of server and has a size limitation of 4GB.

Internal LOBs are stored in the database as columns in a table while external LOBs are stored outside the database in operating system files. In your case, you can store it as a external LOB - as a BFILE so that it is stored on a disk.

Every LOB has a LOB Locator associated with it which can be viewed as a handle or pointer to the actual location of the LOB value.

Since only the LOB locator is stored in a row, when you query from a LOB column, Oracle only returns the LOB locator - not the entire value of the LOB.

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What changes are required in PowerCenter when the server or client machine IP address changes?

lynx286 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:59:31 +0800

There are no changes required in PowerCenter as long as the host name remains same and you use a host name in your domain, node and services configuration.

There is no connectivity changes required in the PowerCenter clients.

However, if the IP address of the node, instead of hostname, is configured at the domain level, then do the following:

Backup the domain by executing infasetup backupdomain command

Make changes to the backup file by editing it with the new IP address

Restore the domain

Note
This is under the assumption that there are no additional changes in the network.

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