COGNOS Business Intelligence Series 7

Chapter 2: Configure Servers
To work within this restriction, you must set the CGI (common gateway interface) to
communicate only on the dispatcher port. This way, all communication to and from the gateway
is on the same port.
Steps
1. Start Configuration Manager.
2. Click the Cognos PowerPlay Enterprise Server.Gateway.General.Restrict the Outgoing Web
Port property, and set the value to True.
3. Click Apply.
Change the Port for Windows Connections
If you are connecting to a PowerPlay server using a Windows client application (PowerPlay for
Windows or PowerPlay for Excel), you may want to restrict outbound communication to a
specific port. For example, you may need to connect through a firewall.
You can configure your firewall to allow TCP traffic through a specified port, and then configure
the Windows client applications to listen on this port.
Restricting the port number for Windows connections may affect performance if many client
applications are accessing the server.
Steps
1. On the computers running the Windows client applications, open the file cern.ini in a text
editor.
It is located in the bin directory.
2. Add or edit the following lines, replacing port_number with the port number you want to use:
[PowerPlay Server - PPDSRemote]
Port=port_number
You can use any port number between 1025 and 65535 (inclusive).
3. Save and close the file.
Configure Security on a Microsoft Web Server
You can use Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) to control Web access to cubes on
PowerPlay Enterprise Server by requiring network security information from users when they log
on.
In Microsoft IIS, you configure the network security using Microsoft Management Console. For
information about Microsoft Management Console, see the documentation provided with the
Microsoft Internet Information Server Web server.
This table describes how the security properties affect access to cubes on a PowerPlay server.
Check box
Allow Anonymous
Basic Authentication (Passwords Sent in Clear
Text)
Description
Limits users to cubes in directories accessible
by the Web server.
Prompts for network security information
when users access cubes using non Microsoft
Web browsers.
The Basic Authentication (Passwords Sent in Clear Text) check box affects user privileges. For
example, if a cube is stored in a directory that a user doesn't have network privileges for, the user
can’t open the PowerPlay Web page that is generated from the cube.
22 Cognos PowerPlay (R)