Windows 7

[bspeaker]

My company plans to migrate to Windows 7 in the next year or so. What are the odds that I'll be able to move our current version (9.0 SP3) without having to completely upgrade to a new version?

[George Regateiro]

So far IBM does not appear to be going back and certifying older releases to newer OS and Office releases. In the past we have run out of support OS and Office releases without a problem, but that is at your own risk. Of greater concern would be that come the end of this year support for 9.0 ends.

[rodrigo]

My concern is bigger..

TM1 9.5 Release Notes 9.5.0
IBM Cognos TM1 9.5 Release Notes > End-of-life statements > TM1 9.0, TM1 9.1

As of December 31, 2010 IBM Cognos will no longer support the 9.0 and 9.1 versions of the TM1 software.

[Alan Kirk]

My concern is bigger..

TM1 9.5 Release Notes 9.5.0
IBM Cognos TM1 9.5 Release Notes > End-of-life statements > TM1 9.0, TM1 9.1

As of December 31, 2010 IBM Cognos will no longer support the 9.0 and 9.1 versions of the TM1 software.

Could be worse... originally 9.0 was going to go off support at the end of 2009. I'm not sure what made them change their mind though hopefully it was because a lot of people remained unconvinced by the {cough} "benefits" of the 9.1 locking and memory bloatware model and have stayed on 9.0.

But as for support? We've been on an unsupported version for ages, but it hasn't mattered since we at least know where the land mines are.

[stephen waters]

Excellent but completely hidden news!!

see http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.w ... cognos_tm1

I had to spend ages at the end of last year explaining to a couple of customers why the best upgrade for their existing system would still be to 9.0 even though it was due to come off active support 31 Dec 2009. "Why wouldn't we go with the latest, actively supported version that our IBM sales rep talked about ...." Thankfully I can now go back and reassure them they are on active support on a good robust version!

As for Windows 7 etc, lack of support does not mean it doesn't work. I recently came across a client using, Ver 9.0, Win 2008 server plus clients running XP, Vista and Win 7 with mix of Office 2003 and 2007. Seemed to be working OK but it is at your own risk!

In fact, I am going to post this as new thread to spread the good news

[bspeaker]

Thanks to everyone for the helpful feedback. I'll start some testing and see if I can get 9.0 running on a Windows 7 machine. I'll keep you posted on what I find out.

[Jennifer Good]

Just wondering how your testing went. Some of our users need to upgrade to Windows 7 and are using TM1 v9.0. Did you see any issues?

Thanks,
Jennifer

[Alan Kirk]

Just wondering how your testing went. Some of our users need to upgrade to Windows 7 and are using TM1 v9.0. Did you see any issues?

I've been running 9.0 on Windows 7 for the last month or so, ever since I decided to replace my useless piece of garbage Dell Vista machine. (The one with its 20 minute battery life, and replacement batteries which not only cost twice as much as comparable batteries but had been "maybe 4 to 6 weeks" away from delivery for about 3 months (and still were when I gave up) meaning that for most of my time away from a power outlet I was lugging a high tech paperweight.

Sidebar: IMHO, never, NEVER buy a Dell notebook. In my experience their desktops are OK if you want a gutless, underperforming vanilla box that will run for a long time (I regard them as the Toyota Corolla of computing, but with less character), but their notebooks? One comment that I saw on the Web summed up my own experience perfectly. "Buying a Dell notebook is like running red lights. You may get away with it a couple of times, but eventually you will get caught.")

But we were discussing Windows 7.

I've had no problems running either 9.0 server or client (both Excel and Architect) on Windows 7 Ultimate. I haven't tried Web, and don't plan to. Bear in mind that I haven't done an exhaustive battery of tests, I've just been running it but this includes all of the weird and wonderful things that I'm inclined to do like slicing, dicing, TIs, TM1 API code, etc, etc. Also, although I have Excel 2007 on the notebook and have used 9.0 on there on a couple of occasions, most of the use has been with Excel 2003. I therefore can't vouch for Excel 2007 at all.

The only issues that I've found with Windows 7 are:
- It continues the Vista tradition of having Windows Explorer as an unreliable piece of junk which will rarely last through a session without crashing at least once. There are many, many threads on this in many, many forums, yet M$ don't seem to think that it's a big issue, or at least not to the extent of fixing it. Since Explorer is also used in the File -> Open dialog of Office applications (and when it crashes, they crash) I've learnt to be very assiduous about saving all documents before opening a new one, though admittedly I've found it to be much more of a problem with Word than Excel. It obviously doesn't cause a problem when opening a workbook in an Applications folder, for instance.
- After returning from hibernation, the TM1 client will sometimes (randomly, from what I can tell) be unable to read the list of running servers from the Admin Server. This is despite the fact that the Admin Server and the TM1 server services are all running. This was an issue in Vista as well, but it's unlikely to be a problem in a pure client environment where the Admin Server and TM1 servers are running on a remote box.