9.4 Released today

[Steve Vincent]

due to the unique way this place is setup i can't download the software from Cognos at work. Docs are fine but for some reason the software always fails, but i don't really have anywhere to test it right now either. Guess we'll just have to enjoy your postings on the subject, but if they haven't fixed the "active" status of a user in 9.4 then we ain't touching it anyway. We have a prefectly good process set up for tracking our users and we aren't going to change that just because Cognos broke it

[Eric]

I can't be the ONLY one doing a rectal probe on 9.4

I have read most of the documentation, but testing has not started yet. That is slotted for next week. We are in the budget process so time is sparse and work and I have my CPA exam on Monday so any other time I have has been chewed up.

Hopefully I will get into the meat before you find everything!

[Eric]

In case anyone wants to jump ahead, my first test will be can it handle concurrent processes. If this is not fixed my hopeful migration to 9.4 will be squashed.

[Alan Kirk]

Oh, and did I mention that there's STILL no find and replace in the TI editor? Nope, it's still the same ol' TI Editor, the one that makes Notepad look advanced. I mean seriously, it's 2008, and we still have... that.

We get the umpteenth permutation of the Rules Editor (which I can't see because I am NOT downloading YET ANOTHER half a gigabyte incarnation of the gorram .net framework), but the TI editor? Henry Ford probably used it when he was building a cube to track sales of the Model T.

[David Usherwood]

I've installed 9.4 on a VMWare Workstation virtual machine - catch me putting it on my live environment!
I encountered some config issues on Excel - thought "No problem, I can copy the bin directory out to my main machine and run Perspectives/Architect there, just like I've always done if I want to mix versions...."
Doesn't work with 9.4. Perspectives hangs Excel, Architect just never shows.
This is going to be a _real_ pain. But can't really raise as a problem, since it's not a supported setup (though often implemented by Applix/Cognos since it makes upgrades/testing so easy).
Can others try this out, just in case I've made a booboo here?

[Steve Vincent]

you mean a <9.4 client looking at a 9.4 server? if so, no you can't do that. its in the release notes somewhere, due to the unicode changes to cope with longer strings nothing but a 9.4 client will work.

Here's one that should be easy to check tho. In the 9.4 guides it says that "DimensionElementInsert" can be used on any tab in a TI. In 9.0, as i've just found to my cost, this is not the case. I tried it on the data tab and it did sweet FA, can someone please try that in 9.4 and see if that is a change or if the guide is incorrect?

Cheers

[Mike L]

In the 9.4 guides it says that "DimensionElementInsert" can be used on any tab in a TI.

I rather liked the convention that dimension changes were only committed upon successful completion of the metadata tab. Perhaps it was false confidence, but I took some comfort from the assurance that an aborted process would not leave dimensions in a corrupt state.

[Mike Cowie]

I've installed 9.4 on a VMWare Workstation virtual machine - catch me putting it on my live environment!
I encountered some config issues on Excel - thought "No problem, I can copy the bin directory out to my main machine and run Perspectives/Architect there, just like I've always done if I want to mix versions...."
Doesn't work with 9.4. Perspectives hangs Excel, Architect just never shows.
This is going to be a _real_ pain. But can't really raise as a problem, since it's not a supported setup (though often implemented by Applix/Cognos since it makes upgrades/testing so easy).
Can others try this out, just in case I've made a booboo here?

Hi David,

I haven't had a chance to play much with 9.4 yet, but today I did at least install it on a VM (I'm using Microsoft VirtualPC, not that that would matter) and copied the loose files over. I currently have 9.1 SP3 "officially" installed on my laptop and was able to run 9.4 from the copied over loose files without a hitch (running a 9.4 TM1 Server as an application, TM1 Perspectives in Excel 2007).

I can't think of other differences we might have that would explain your copy not working, but am happy to work through setup differences offline, if you like. The good news is that loose files still appears to work, in general.

Regards,
Mike Cowie

[David Usherwood]

That's quite a relief. There may well be some oddities in my install (possibly a broken MSOffice environment) which broke the 'run from bin' approach. I've now installed on an old laptop and will try it again.

[David Usherwood]

Cracked it.
If you run (as I do) an TM1 Admin server and the TM1 Excel service all the time, and you copy the 9.4 bin folder from a full install done elsewhere, the client tools won't start. Stopping the services lets them start properly.

[IanB]

I've installed 9.4 on a VMWare Workstation virtual machine - catch me putting it on my live environment!
I encountered some config issues on Excel - thought "No problem, I can copy the bin directory out to my main machine and run Perspectives/Architect there, just like I've always done if I want to mix versions...."
Doesn't work with 9.4. Perspectives hangs Excel, Architect just never shows.
This is going to be a _real_ pain. But can't really raise as a problem, since it's not a supported setup (though often implemented by Applix/Cognos since it makes upgrades/testing so easy).
Can others try this out, just in case I've made a booboo here?

I have 9.4 installed under Virtual PC 2007. I also like the loose files approach but with 9.4, ran into and resolved two problems.
I copied the cognos\tm1\bin files (including the ssl folder) from the virtual machine to my desktop and could start a local server but not the excel client
1) Visual C++ runtimes: Previous releases have used VC 7 and have put the necessary dlls in the bin folder. With 9.4, they have moved to VC 8 (SP1) - which installs to c:\windows\winsxs. This was missing on my desktop - but I found the redistributable .msi for this on the microsoft download site. Now, my loose files work fine

2) Until I connected to the corporate network - Excel hangs and TM1 doesn't start...
I used a look at sysinternals TCPVIEW showed that Excel was connected to the 913 admin server on the network!
Modifying the tm1p.ini to exclude the IP address of the admin server did the trick

Hope this helps

[IanB]

New problem - and solution...
My working 913 system gets corrupted when I start a 9.4 server against it (copied to a new folder of course).
It appears that a number of .dim files that have been around for years are not compatible with 9.4 They were created under version 6 and have never needed changing. They worked fine with all earlier TM1 versions and had not been changed by previous upgrades. Now, though, TM1 has moved to Unicode, so all the dims are re-written.

The solution was quite simple - open and save the original dim files in 913 server explorer. Copy new .dim files and all .cub files to 94 data directory. The conversion process now works correctly on restarting the 94 server

[dubs]

"Oh, and did I mention that there's STILL no find and replace in the TI editor? Nope, it's still the same ol' TI Editor, the one that makes Notepad look advanced. I mean seriously, it's 2008, and we still have... that.

We get the umpteenth permutation of the Rules Editor (which I can't see because I am NOT downloading YET ANOTHER half a gigabyte incarnation of the gorram .net framework), but the TI editor? Henry Ford probably used it when he was building a cube to track sales of the Model T."

can i ask if thats all the framework is required for?

cheers

[cookie monster]

"Oh, and did I mention that there's STILL no find and replace in the TI editor? Nope, it's still the same ol' TI Editor, the one that makes Notepad look advanced. I mean seriously, it's 2008, and we still have... that.

See this thread

[Alan Kirk]

"Oh, and did I mention that there's STILL no find and replace in the TI editor? Nope, it's still the same ol' TI Editor, the one that makes Notepad look advanced. I mean seriously, it's 2008, and we still have... that.

{Large screenshot of Vizier omitted for space}

See this thread

Yyyyeah.

Aaanyway, as that thread does note, that is in fact a third party add-on which you have to pay additional bucks for.

I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, but it's a relevant and significant piece of information that really should be mentioned when someone indicates that "you can get x, y or z functionality here!"

In the TI editor itself, the one that ships with 9.4 and which you get as part of your maintenance fee... as I said, there is STILL no find and replace function.