Cognos ReportNetTM Installation and Configuration Guide

Chapter 4: Configuring ReportNet
If you change the value of a property, you must save the configuration and then restart the
ReportNet service to apply the new settings to your computer.
Before you configure ReportNet, ensure that
• all ReportNet server components are installed on one computer
• a Web server is installed and running on the same computer as the ReportNet components
• you created the database for the content store on an available computer in your network
Use the following checklist to guide you through the required configuration tasks:
❑ Configure your Web server.
❑ Set the database connection properties for the content store.
❑ Configure a mail server account.
❑ Configure your Web browser.
❑ Test the installation and configuration.
After you complete these configuration tasks, you can change the default behavior of ReportNet
(p. 40) to better suit your reporting environment.
Configuring Your Web Server
For all installations, before you use Web pages generated by ReportNet, you must configure
your Web server. You must set up virtual directories, also known as Web aliases, for the
directories that contain the HTML and Web files for ReportNet.
On UNIX, the account under which the Web server runs must have read access to the
crnstartup.xml in the crn_location/configuration directory. By default the crnstartup.xml file has
read permission for others. If you run your Web server under a specific group, you can change
the crnstartup.xml file permissions to ensure that it belongs to the same group as the Web
server. You can then remove the read permission for others.
The following virtual directories are required for all Web servers. You can use a name other than
crn in the aliases. However, you must use cgi-bin and help as the second part of the alias.
Alias Location Permission
crn crn_location\webcontent Read
crn/cgi-bin crn_location\cgi-bin Execute
crn/help crn_location\webcontent\documentation Read
Tips
• If you use Apache Web server, ensure that you define the crn/cgi-bin alias before the crn
and crn/help aliases in the httpd.conf file located in the Apache_installation/conf directory.
• If you use Web aliases other than crn, your Web server is on another computer, or you are
using Microsoft Internet Application Interface (ISAPI), apache_mod or a servlet gateway,
you must change the value of the Gateway URI property in the Environment group in
Cognos Configuration.
• To use Report Studio’s image browser, you must enable Web Distributed Authoring and
Versioning (WebDAV) on your Web server. For information about configuring WebDAV, see
your Web server documentation.
Note: iPlanet does not support WebDAV.
Set the Database Connection Properties for the Content Store
For all installations, you must specify the database server information to ensure that ReportNet
can connect to the database you use for the content store. Content Manager uses the database
logon to access the content store.
Ensure that you used one of the supported database servers to create the content store.
34 Cognos ReportNet TM