Technical Blog Post
Abstract
BiLog: Maximo Cognos Meta Data Publishing Business Rules
Body
Some rules are hard to follow. Not eating dessert before dinner. Always walking inside of the crosswalk. Not bringing my favorite Diet Raspberry Ice Tea to a movie theatre.
Business rules in Maximo specify product functionality. In the Maximo Cognos report integration, there are some key business rules to be aware of for the metadata publishing process we’ve been reviewing the last few weeks. As noted in the last entry, you can publish Report Object Structures (ROS) in Maximo to create the Cognos meta data packages. Please remember to keep these business rules in mind when using this functionality -
1. If a ROS does not have a description value, and you select the action to publish it, you will be prompted to enter a description value. If you do not enter a description, the value of the object structure name (ex. REP_WORKORDER) will be used to identify the package in Cognos.
2. The ROS Description must be unique. If it is not a unique text value, the package will be unable to be published, and you will be prompted to enter a unique value.
3. You can not utilize the characters [ ] in the ROS description as Cognos cannot accept these characters
4. Only persistent objects and attributes are included in the ROS and in the metadata packages published to Cognos. No non-persistent values are published.
5. The Maximo Cognos Metadata publishing process supports only column to column relationships (simple relationships). An example of a simple relationship between WORKORDER and the parent ASSET is shown below as assetnum=:assetnum and siteid=:siteid.
Maxrelationships defined by SQL statements that include filters and/or sub-selects are considered complex relationships. ROS containing complex relationships are not supported for Cognos Package Publishing. If you try to publish these, a metadata generation processing exception will occur and the publishing process will be interrupted. You will then receive this error:
BMXAA7412E - The report object structure cannot be published as a Cognos package because it contains one or more complex relationships. Evaluate the relationships that are used in your report object structure before publishing the package.
An example of a complex relationship is shown herewith its text in red
assetnum=:assetnum and siteid=:siteid and linetype not in (select value from synonymdomain where domainid='LINETYPE' and maxvalue='TOOL')
To resolve complex relationships, create new maxrelationships which utilize COLUMN TO COLUMN relationships only. You can find additional details and screenshots on the business rules for the Maximo-Cognos Integration for Version 7.5 here and for Version 7.1 here
Additionally, if you would like to see some enhancements to these business rules, be sure to log or vote on its RFE (Request for Functional Enhancement) here. For example, if you want to have the ability to publish complex relationships as Maximo meta data packages, vote for its feature request at this url! Each vote you submit helps raise the priority and visibility of the enhancement request!
Please remember to VOTE for your favorite enhancements and eat pie before dinner!
[{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU059","label":"IBM Software w\/o TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SSLKT6","label":"IBM Maximo Asset Management"},"Component":"","Platform":[{"code":"PF025","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB59","label":"Sustainability Software"}}]
UID
ibm11133463