COGNOS Business Intelligence Series 7

Chapter 1: Enterprise Reporting
• The dispatcher is a Windows service or a UNIX daemon that receives PowerPlay requests
(either directly from a Windows client or from the gateway for a Web client) and manages the
request queue. The dispatcher passes the requests to a query or report processor on the same
computer, or forwards the request to another dispatcher on another computer.
• The processors process requests and generate results for the client applications. The query
processor handles cube requests from PowerPlay Web Explorer, PowerPlay for Windows, and
PowerPlay for Excel. The report processor handles report requests from PowerPlay Web
Viewer and printing requests from PowerPlay Web Explorer. Several instances of either
processor may be started, limited only by available memory. The maximum number of
processes can be set in the administration tool, PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration.
PowerPlay Enterprise Server
Windows client
LAN
Web client
Gateway
Dispatcher
Processors
Extranet/Intranet
Alternate Gateways
The PowerPlay Enterprise Server architecture adapts to your existing and expanding IT
infrastructure in a mixed computing environment. You can install components on separate
computers, or combine components on one or more computers. Most components have a
Windows and UNIX equivalent, and you can combine these in any way.
For example, you may have a data mart that consists of several UNIX computers on which you
plan to store cubes, but a Web server that runs on Windows.
If you install multiple dispatchers, you can also configure the system to allow each dispatcher to
share the reports that are published to the portal. This allows users to locate their published
reports regardless of the dispatcher they are routed to. For example, if you use a router to
distribute Web requests to different gateways and different dispatchers, you can ensure that your
users will always be able to locate their reports.
This flexibility is almost limitless, but requires careful consideration in order to get optimum
performance. For information about installing and configuring the various components of
PowerPlay Enterprise Server, see the installation guide and the Planning Advanced Installations
Guide.
To improve Web server performance, you can configure Cognos Web products to use alternate
gateways that replace the default CGI programs. The alternate gateways are native server
extensions for ISAPI to support Microsoft Internet Information Server on Windows, for NSAPI to
support Sun Java System Web servers on both Windows and UNIX, and for the Apache module.
Enterprise Server Guide 11