Use an external object store for report output and datasets

You can configure Content Manager to store report output and datasets to a local drive or network share by defining an external object store. Report output is available through the portal and IBM® Cognos® SDK, but the report output is not stored in the content store database.

Using an external object store for report output reduces the size of the content store and provides performance improvements for Content Manager.

Before you begin

Ensure that you do the following before you create an external object store connection.
  • Provide Content Manager computers with access to the file location of the external object store.
  • Provide the user account that runs the IBM Cognos service with read and write access to the file location.
  • Create the content store.

Procedure

  1. Start IBM Cognos Configuration.
  2. In the Explorer window, under Data Access > Content Manager, right-click the name of your Content Store, and then click New resource > External Object Store.
  3. In the New Resource - External Object Store window, type a unique name for your file system repository, and click OK.

    You can have only one external object store.

  4. Click the name for the repository.
  5. In the External Object Store - Resource Properties window, click inside the value field, click edit, and when the URI values window opens, type the path to your file system location, where file-system-path is the full path to an existing file location.
    Table 1. Examples of URI values

    File system

    URI value

    Windows

    file:///c:/file-system-path

    file://host/share/file-system-path

    UNIX or Linux®

    file:///file-system-path
    Note: Relative paths, such as file:///../file-system-path and drive mappings are not supported.

    In a distributed installation, all Content Managers must have read and write access to the file system location. To improve performance when reading outputs, Application Tier Components, essentially the repository service, should have read access to the file system location. If they do not have read access, requests are routed to the active Content Manager.

  6. Restart the IBM Cognos service.