Description of options to save Cognos BI report output to the filesystem

Resolving The Problem

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence (as of 10.2.1) offers four options to save report output to the file system, which the product documentation ("Installation and Configuration Guide" and "Administration and Security Guide") refers to as saving "in" IBM Cognos (1), saving "outside of" IBM Cognos (2), content archiving (3), and external object store (4).

Option 1 is enabled by performing the following two actions:
- setting "Save report outputs to a file system" to True in Cognos Configuration - Data Access > Content Manager (Installation and Configuration Guide 10.2.1 - pg.239)
- setting the CM.OutputLocation, CM.OutputScript, CM.OutputByBurstKey parameters at the content manager service level in System Administration in Cognos Connection (Administration and Security Guide 10.2.1 - pg.143/144)

This option will save a copy of the report output to the path specified by cm.OutputLocation and will run the cm.OutputScript for every output of any report run in batch or saved to the content store. That is, the end user does not have an option to turn it on or off.
This option is performed by Content Manager and increases the load on this service. In Cognos Connection, users can view copies of the outputs saved in the content store.
This option is available in all Cognos versions starting with 8.3.

Option 2 is enabled by:
- setting the "Archive Location File System Root" to an existing path in Cognos Configuration - Global configuration (Installation and Configuration Guide 10.2.1 - pg.238).
- specifying one or more "File system location" entries at the dispatchers and services level in Cognos Administration - these will be appended to the root specified above (Administration and Security Guide 10.2.1 - pg.143).

This option will enable the end user to select the option to save a specific report output to the file system to the given location. This option in itself will not run any scripts. Outputs saved in the file system using this option can not be viewed in Cognos Connection. The end user has an option to save a copy of the output in the content store at the same time.
Saving outputs in a file system using this option is performed by Delivery service and the load is distributed among all Application Tier services. This option does not increase the load on the Content Manager service.
This option is available in all Cognos versions.

Option 3 is enabled by:
- setting the "Alias Roots" to existing paths in Cognos Configuration - Global configuration (Installation and Configuration Guide 10.2.1 - Chapter 11. IBM Cognos content archival).
- specifying one or more "External Repository data source connections" entries in Cognos Administration (Administration and Security Guide 10.2.1 - pg.180).
- setting a repository at the folder and package level (Administration and Security Guide 10.2.1 - Chapter 11. IBM Cognos content archival - Administer content archival)

When a new output is saved in the content store it is also saved in the external repository file system location associated with the package or folder. The report retention rules can be set to keep only recent outputs in the content store. Older outputs will be kept in the file system.
Outputs saved in the file system using this option can be viewed in Cognos Connection in the View Archived Versions tab of the View Report Output Versions page.
Content Archival Content Maintenance Task can be used to archive existing outputs.
This option provides an ability to adhere to regulatory compliance requirements, and can enhance the scalability and performance of IBM Cognos products by reducing the size of content in the content store.
This option is available in all Cognos versions starting with 10.2.

Option 4 is enabled by:
- setting the "External object store" to an existing path in Cognos Configuration - Data Access - Content Manager (Installation and Configuration Guide 10.2.1 - pg.241).

When using this option, report output is available through IBM Cognos Connection 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.
This option is available in all Cognos versions starting with 10.2.1.

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All the options are independent and the paths and properties specified only apply to the one specific option.

If all four options are correctly configured and the end user will select the delivery options to save the report to the content store and also to the file system, the report output will also be saved four times - once in cm.outputlocation, once in the path constructed as per description of Option 2 above, once in the archival location, and once in the external object store. In this case, if a cm.outputscript is specified, it will also be executed (based on the first output).