Troubleshooting Metrics reports

The Metrics application in IBM® Connections displays information in reports formatted as charts and tables. If you encounter problems while viewing the reports, use this information to help resolve the problem.

If you see the Metrics page displayed with links and options to select but no actual data, this indicates that the Metrics application is running but there is a problem with the backend IBM Cognos® Business Intelligence server components. Common problems include authentication failures, conflicts with PowerCube refresh schedules, and report query failures.

Table 1. Potential problems with metrics reports and suggested solutions
Problem Solution

The Metrics user interface displays the following message:

Access to Metrics is Restricted

The user who receives this message is has not been granted access to the appropriate level of Metrics. You can grant this user community-level access or global-level access.

The Metrics user interface displays the following message after the View list of time periods:

Error 403: AuthorizationFailed

Verify that the Cognos application user role BI User in WebSphere® Application Server is mapped to All Authenticated in Application's Realm.

The Metrics user interface displays the following message:

Cognos error: CCL-BIT-0006. The connection closed before the request is processed. If you are using WebSphere Application server, to reduce the frequency of this error, increase the Persistent Timeout parameter for the Web container transport chains in the administrative console. Increase the time in 10-15 second intervals until the error no longer or rarely occurs.
The HTTP 1.1 protocol provides a keep-alive feature that enables the TCP connection between HTTP clients and the server to remain open between requests. By default, WebSphere Application Server will close a given client connection after a number of requests or a timeout period. After a connection is closed, it will be recreated if the client issues another request; however early closure of connections can reduce performance. Correct this problem by increasing the timeout settings as indicated in the error message:
  1. Log into the Integrated Solutions Console on the Deployment Manager as the WebSphere administrator.
  2. Click Servers > Application Servers.
  3. In the list of servers, click the name of the Cognos BI Server.
  4. On the Configuration page, click Web Container Settings > Web Container > Web container transport chains
  5. Select the normal inbound chain for serving requests; this is typically named WCInboundDefault, on port 9080.
  6. Click HTTP Inbound Channel (HTTP_2).
  7. Type a value for the Maximum persistent requests (the number of requests kept alive at once time) to specify the number of requests that are allowed on a single HTTP connection.
  8. Enter a value for Persistent timeouts to specify the amount of time, in seconds, that the HTTP transport channel allows a socket to remain idle between requests.
  9. Click OK.
  10. Save the change to the master configuration by clicking Save in the "Messages" box.

You might need to repeat this process and increase the Persistent timeouts period by 10 to 15 seconds at a time until the error no longer occurs
A community owner clicks Update on the Metrics page and the report does one of the following:
  • The report finishes immediately but contains no data
  • The report runs indefinitely
Verify that the cognosAdmin JAAS J2C alias is configured with the correct Cognos administrator user name and password by checking the setting as follows:
  1. Log into the Integrated Solutions Console on the Deployment Manager as the WebSphere administrator.
  2. Click Global security > JAAS - J2C authentication data.
  3. Select cognosAdmin.
  4. If necessary, update the Cognos administrator user name and password.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Save your changes to the master configuration by clicking Save in the Messages box.

Reports display either a "No data available" message, or all the data points have the value of 0.
Verify that the Cognos Transformer PowerCube generation is properly occurring and if necessary, correct the job schedules to prevent conflicts:
  1. On the computer hosting Cognos Transformer, open the trxschelog.log file. This log is located in the following directory:
    Cognos_Transformer_install_path/metricsmodel/trxschelog.log
    here Cognos_Transformer_install_path is the value specified for the cognos.transformer.install.path property in the cognos-setup.properties file. For example, on Windows: 
    C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\Cognos\metricsmodel\trxschelog.log
  2. Review the log to make sure the PowerCube generations were successful.

    Errors might indicate that the scheduled jobs that generate each PowerCube are incorrectly configured or not running, which might cause conflicts between the daily refresh and the weekly refresh.

  3. Schedule the refresh jobs so they do not collide.
    • AIX®, Linux: Edit the cron jobs in the system crontab to resolve any conflicts in scheduling.
    • Windows: Edit the MetricsCubeDailyRefresh job to ensure it does not collide with the weekly refresh. You can modify the job’s properties in the Task Scheduler Library; for more information see Configuring the job scheduler for Cognos Transformer on Windows.
When scheduling the refresh jobs, note that:
  • There are two jobs: a daily refresh that collects incremental changes and a weekly refresh that updates the entire PowerCube.
  • These jobs should run at times when the Cognos system usage is relatively low, to minimize the impact on normal usage; you should adjust these times based on your system's usage pattern.
  • The weekly refresh should run only once every week; since it will take longer to complete, you should schedule it for the time when system usage is lowest (for example, on the weekend).
  • The daily refresh should run early in the morning (for example, just after midnight), so users can see latest metrics for previous day.

Reports display a message indicating that a query failed; for example:

At least one invalid member reference was encountered in the query. '[METRICS_TRX_CUBE].[...]...'

or

No connection to the data source 'METRICS_TRX_CUBE' could be established.
A message like this indicates that the PowerCube has not finished generating data for the requested report. There are two ways to resolve this problem:
  • Wait for the scheduled job to finish refreshing the PowerCube data and try again.
  • Manually force a PowerCube refresh by running the following script:
    Cognos_Transformer_install_path/metricsmodel/build-all.sh|bat
    where Cognos_Transformer_install_path is the value specified for the cognos.transformer.install.path property in the cognos-setup.properties file. For example, on Windows:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\Cognos\metricsmodel\build-all.bat

No Metrics data displays and the Cognos Powercube model file contains incorrect administrator username.

To fix the Powercube mdl files with the correct Cognos administrator user name, perform the following steps:

  1. Open the <cognos transformer path>/metricsmodel/MetricsTrxCube.mdl using a text editor.
  2. Search for the text string "LCUSER" UserId, You should find something similar to the following value if the correct Cognos administrator username was "Susan Adams": 
    Signon 17207 "LCUSER" UserId "Susan"
  3. Change the value to the correct user name such as. "Susan Adams" and then save the mdl file.
  4. Perform the same update for <cognos transformer path>/metricsmodel/MetricsAuditCube.mdl file.
  5. Run the build.bat or build.sh to build the Cognos Powercube again.