Cognos BI Content Manager and DB2 Content Store

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The Cognos® BI Content Manager is a service that manages the storage of customer application data, including security, configuration data, models, metrics, report specifications, and report output. It is needed to publish packages, retrieve or store report specifications, and manage scheduling information.

The Content Manager stores its information in a Content Store database, which is typically located in tier three of the three-tier architecture model.

The Content Store for the SUT is an IBM® DB2® database. However, other relational databases are supported as well.

The Content Manager uses JDBC (Java™ DataBase Connectivity) to access the Content Store.

Much of the information in the Content Store, such as report results and XML report specifications, is stored as binary large object (BLOB) fields.

For more information on the Cognos BI Content Providers, refer to the IBM Knowledge Center for Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1:

  • Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 >Install > Business Intelligence Architecture and Deployment Guide 10.2.1 > The Multitiered Architecture > Tier 3. Data: Content Providers

Content Store tuning (DB2)

The following DB2 settings were adjusted according to the guideline to create a Content Store database.

Database configuration parameters

  • Application heap size (applheapsz)
    • recommendation: AUTOMATIC or at least 1024 KiB
    • improvement: If the application heap size value is too small, out of memory errors may occur when there are many users.
  • Lock timeout (locktimeout)
    • recommendation: 240 seconds
    • improvement: Do not set this parameter to an infinite value. The default is -1, which means that lock timeout detection is turned off and a lock will be waited for until it is granted or a deadlock occurs.

For more information on the Cognos BI Content Providers, refer the IBM Knowledge Center for Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1:

Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 > Install > Business Intelligence Installation and Configuration Guide 10.2.1.1 > Preparing to install > Guidelines for creating the content store > Suggested settings for creating the content store in DB2 on Linux™, Windows™, and UNIX™ operating systems

DB2 registry variables

  • DB2_INLIST_TO_NLJN
    • recommendation: set to YES
    • improvement: Setting this query compiler variable to YES improves performance by controlling optimization decisions about your database, such as forcing optimization decisions and SQL query operations.

For more information on DB2 tuning, refer to the IBM Knowledge Center for Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1:

  • Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 > Install > Business Intelligence Installation and Configuration Guide 10.2.1 > Performance Maintenance > Tuning a DB2 Content Store
  • Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 > Install > Business Intelligence Installation and Configuration Guide 10.2.1 > Preparing to install > Guidelines for creating the content store