Guidelines for creating the content store

The content store is a database that Content Manager uses to store global configuration data, global settings (such as the language and currency formats shown in the user interface), connections to data sources, and product-specific content. You must use one of the supported enterprise-level databases as the content store in a production environment.

Design models and log files are not stored in the content store.

You must create the content store before you can use your IBM® Cognos® Analytics product. If you use the Easy (previously Ready to Run!) option, Informix is installed and configured to use as your content store.

If you are using IBM Db2 for your content store, you can generate a DDL to allow your database administrator to create a Db2 database suitable for the content store. For more information, see Generating a script file to create a database for an IBM Db2 content store.

Database properties

You must create the content store database using one of the databases listed in the following table.

The following table shows the character encoding and protocol that is used by the different types of databases.

Table 1. Character encoding and protocols for the content store database
Database	Character encoding	Protocol
Db2	UTF-8	TCP/IP
Oracle	AL32UTF8 or AL32UTF16	TCP/IP
Microsoft SQL Server	UTF-8 or UTF-16	TCP/IP
Informix®	UTF-8	TCP/IP

Collation sequence

Cognos Analytics uses a single sort order that specifies the rules used by the database to interpret, collect, compare, and present character data. For example, a sort order defines whether the letter A is less than, equal to, or greater than the letter B; whether the collation is case sensitive; and whether the collation is accent sensitive. For more information about collation and collation sequences, see the ICU - International Components for Unicode web site (http://site.icu-project.org/), select the User Guide, and search for Collation.