Suggested settings for creating the content store in Oracle

The database you create for the content store must contain the specified configuration settings.

To ensure a successful installation, use the following guidelines when creating the content store. Use the same guidelines to create a database for log messages.

Use the following list to help you set up the content store on Oracle.

  • Ensure that the parameter for the database instance compatibility level of the content store database is set to 9.0.1 or higher.

    For example, you can check the COMPATIBLE initialization parameter setting by issuing the following SQL statement:

    SELECT name, value, description FROM v$parameter WHERE name='compatible';

    For information about changing an instance configuration parameter, see the Oracle documentation.

  • Determine if the database is Unicode.
    Tip: One method is to type the following select statement:

    select * from NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS

    If the result set returns an NLS_CHARACTERSET that is not Unicode, create a new database and specify AL32UTF8 for the database character set parameters.

    If using the compatible query mode, you might want to specify the COGUDA_EXTENDEDCHAR_SUPPORT environment variable with value T or t. This variable replaces substring expressions with SUBSTRC for Oracle to return correct results when the string contains Unicode supplementary characters.

  • Determine which user account is to access the database.
    Tip: If you want to host more than one content store on your Oracle instance and you will use both at the same time, use a different user account for each content store to ensure that each IBM® Cognos® Analytics instance is fully isolated from the others.
  • Ensure that the user account that accesses the database has permission to do the following:
    • Connect to the database
    • Create, alter, and drop triggers, views, procedures, and sequences
    • Create and alter tables
    • Insert, update, and delete data in the database tables
  • Your database administrator must back up IBM Cognos Analytics databases regularly because they contain the Cognos data. To ensure the security and integrity of databases, protect them from unauthorized or inappropriate access.