Framework manager installation
What Is a Model?
When you create a report in Cognos 8 Report Studio or Query Studio, how does IBM Cognos BI know about your data? How does it know how to connect to your databases,and how does it know what the tables and data items are and how they relate to each other?That is the purpose of the Framework Manager Metadata model. The model, created by the BI Administrator using Framework Manager, is the framework that exposes the metadata that describes your source data to the Cognos Studio users.
Before we delve into the process of creating the model, we will try to clarify some terminology. We say “try” because the terminology invariably gets confusing because it changes as you move through the creation process. For starters, even though the tool we use to create the model is called Framework Manager, there is no entity referred to as a framework within the Cognos documentation. What you start with in Framework Manager is a project.The project is composed of a .cpf file and some XML files organized within a folder. The .cpf file is the one that you open with Framework Manager when accessing an existing project.The model is what you create within the project, but since there is generally only one model per project (you can debate this if you start linking models—more on that in the next chapter),it is common to refer to the project as the model. Once you have developed the content within the model, you need to make it available to the studio users. You do this by creating a package,so named because you can package up just the parts of the model you want to expose to the end users. Everything else will remain excluded, or at least hidden from the end user. Because more than one package can be created for a model (that is, within a project), the terminology is pretty clear—that is, until you publish the package and the end users start referring to it within Cognos Connection as a model, or a package, or even a folder. Clear now? Okay, let’s move on.
When you create a report in Cognos 8 Report Studio or Query Studio, how does IBM Cognos BI know about your data? How does it know how to connect to your databases,and how does it know what the tables and data items are and how they relate to each other?That is the purpose of the Framework Manager Metadata model. The model, created by the BI Administrator using Framework Manager, is the framework that exposes the metadata that describes your source data to the Cognos Studio users.
Before we delve into the process of creating the model, we will try to clarify some terminology. We say “try” because the terminology invariably gets confusing because it changes as you move through the creation process. For starters, even though the tool we use to create the model is called Framework Manager, there is no entity referred to as a framework within the Cognos documentation. What you start with in Framework Manager is a project.The project is composed of a .cpf file and some XML files organized within a folder. The .cpf file is the one that you open with Framework Manager when accessing an existing project.The model is what you create within the project, but since there is generally only one model per project (you can debate this if you start linking models—more on that in the next chapter),it is common to refer to the project as the model. Once you have developed the content within the model, you need to make it available to the studio users. You do this by creating a package,so named because you can package up just the parts of the model you want to expose to the end users. Everything else will remain excluded, or at least hidden from the end user. Because more than one package can be created for a model (that is, within a project), the terminology is pretty clear—that is, until you publish the package and the end users start referring to it within Cognos Connection as a model, or a package, or even a folder. Clear now? Okay, let’s move on.
Creating a New Model
To create a basic, but thorough, Framework Manager model from a relational database
source, you will need to do the following:
• Create a data source connection (or reference an existing one).
• Create data source query subjects.
• Create model query subjects to resolve modeling challenges, if necessary.
• Set query item properties.
• Relate the query subjects (define the joins).
• Create model query subjects to present a business view.
• Create a package of the items to present to the studio users.
• Publish the package.
Beyond that list, other tasks can be performed in the model, including setting security,
dealing with