Cognos TM1 Interview Questions

Cognos TM1 Interview Questions

Q.1) What is Sparse Cube?

Ans) A cube in which the number of populated cells as a percentage of total cells is too low

Q.2) What are the different windows in Turbo Integrator?

Ans) There are different tabs available in Turbo Integrator

• Data source
• Variable
• Maps
• Advanced
• Schedule

Q.3) What is the use of an advanced window in the Turbo Integrator?

Ans) Using the Advanced window you can create your own custom scripts.

Q.4) What is TM1 Workflow? How do you create a process in that?

Ans) Workflow is helping for Wide deployment, Collaborative decision making, Continuous and real-time review and refinement and Monitoring of Key Performance Indicators

To create the work.

• Need to define the Views that you need to deploy to the end-users for Decision making.(Its basically Input View)
• You need to define Approval Hierarchy
• Need to deploy
• Security Assignments

Q.5) What are the data sources available with TI?

Ans) 

• Comma-delimited text files including ASCII files
• Relational databases using ODBC Connectivity
• Other Cubes and Views
• Microsoft Analysis Services
• SAP via RFC
• IBM Cognos Packages

Q.6)Where is Portlet used?

Ans) Portlets are used in Cognos.

Q.7) How can you access the TM1 web form portlet?

Ans) There is an option to integrate TM1 viewers in Cognos Portlets.

Q.8) What are the different windows in the portlet?

Ans) There is 3 type of viewers available in TM1.

• Cube Viewer
• Web Sheet Viewer
• Navigation Viewer.

Q.9) What are the basic features of Cognos TM1?

Ans)

• Real-time, the interactive multidimensional database also with write-back functionality.
• 64-bit, in memory OLAP server capable of concentrate huge volumes of data.
• Enterprise-level planning and analysis capabilities.
• Guided modeling environment to facilitate planning, analysis and forecasting.
• The rapid development of flexible models, including profitability models, without batch processing.
• Integrates with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, to establish a single view of performance.

Q.10) How do you use TM1 cubes in Framework Manager?

Ans) TM1 v10.1 has the interoperability function configured to allow packages to be published from TM1.

 Q.11)How to run Turbo Integrator Process from Command Line?

Ans) To initiate the TI process TM1RunTI is a command-line interface tool.

Q.12) Define Data Tab?

Ans) Series of statements that manipulate values for each record in data source.

Q.13) What are sub-tabs in advance tab of TI?

Ans) 

• Prolog
• Metadata
• Data
• Epilog

Q.14) What is the logic of Sparsity in cubes?

Ans)  On average, the more dimensions a cube has, the greater the degree of sparsity.

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Q.15) What is Overfeeding?

Ans) Defining feeders for consolidated cells. (Feeding a consolidated cell automatically feeds all children of the consolidation.)

Q.16) What is Under Feeding?

Ans) Failing to feed cells that contain rules-derived values. This always results in incorrect values and must be avoided at all costs.

Q.17) How does SKIP CHECK help TM1?

Ans) SKIP CHECK forces TM1 to use the Sparse Consolidation algorithm in all cases.

Q.18) What are FEEDERS?

Ans) It creates a placeholder on cells so that cells will not be skipped during the consolidation

Q.19) What is FEEDSTRING?

Ans)

• If the rule defines string values for any cells, then FEEDSTRINGS must be inserted as the first line of rule.
• FEEDSTRINGS declaration ensures that cells containing rules-derived strings are fed.
• Every calculation statement in a rule should have a corresponding feeder statement.

Q.20) What are simple FEEDERS?

Ans) FEEDERS are applied to calculation within one dimension of one cube.

Q.21) Define TM1 package connector?

Ans) TM1 package connector helps to import data from packages/dimensions and custom queries.

Q.22) What is Epilog Tab?

Ans) Series of statements that is to be executed after the data source is processed.

Q.23) Name the function which is used to serialize the TI process?

Ans) The synchronized () function can is used to serialize the TI process so they can be processed sequentially.

Q.24) What are the functions required to be called for enabling or disabling the bulk load of mode?

Ans)

• EnableBulkLoad Mode() = Enable
• Disable Bulk Load Mode() = Disable.

Q.25) What is the limit of string length in Turbo Integrator?

Ans) The limit of string length in Turbo Integrator is 8000 single-byte characters. If the length will become more 8000 bytes then it gets truncated.

Q.26) What are the flaws of Chore Start Time?

Ans) TM1 executes chores in GMT standards. It doesn’t have any auto mechanism to accommodate Daylight Saving. Its Chores Scheduled time should be edited when DayLight time begins and ends.

Q.27) Name the different procedures within TI?

Ans) 

• Defining Data Source
• Setting Variables
• Mapping Data
• Editing Advanced Scripting
• Scheduling the completed Process.

Q.28) How you can enable Bulk Load Mode in TI?

Ans) In Prolog or Epilog section of TI, Bulk Load mode can be enabled.

It always recommended that Bulk Load Mode should be enabled in Prolog section.

Q.29) How we can generate cubes in Cognos?

Ans) There are different ways to generate a cube.

Steps to be followed:

• Just right click on the cube name and build.
• We can write a script in UNIX. Using that we can easily generate the cube.

Q.30) Name the data sources which are available with TI?

Ans) Data Sources available with TI are:

• SAP via RFC
• IBM Cognos Packages
• Microsoft Analysis Services
• Relational databases using ODBC Connectivity
• Comma delimited text files including ASCII files
• Other Cubes and Views

Q.31) Define snapshot?

Ans) Snapshot is nothing it’s only a copy of data, whenever we create any snapshot it only copy the exact data that is related to the particular report. It is used to compare reports. For ex: we want to compare the report of this month with previous month.

Q.32) Define Bulk Load mode?

Ans) 

• It enables TM1 to run in a special optimized Single-user mode. This mode has a capacity to maximize the performance for dedicated tasks during the time when there is no load on server or at night time.
• It doesn’t display a message to end-user to alert them. No new connections can be created.

Q.33) How is the FEEDER Statement written when feeding one cube from another?

Ans) 

• Calculation statement resides in the target cube, but the FEEDER statement should reside in the source cube.
• The Feeder is basically the inverse of the calculation statement in the Target Cube that requires the feeder.

Q.34) How to Troubleshoot the FEEDERS?

Ans) 

• Use Rules Tracer to assist in the development and debugging of rules.
• Rules Tracer functionality is available in Cube Viewer

Q.35) How does Rules Tracer help?

Ans) 

• It traces FEEDERS, it ensures that selected leaf cells are feeding rules-calculated cells properly
• It checks FEEDERS, ensures that the children of selected consolidated cells are fed properly. Check Feeders options is available from consolidated cells and its not available from leaf node

Q.36) What actually happens when Bulk Load mode starts?

Ans) 

• All the scheduled chores will be deactivated
• All the processing by other threads will be paused
• Running chores and any of the existing user threads will be suspended
• TM1 Top connections and all the system-specific threads will be suspended

Q.37) Define Drill Through?

Ans)

By using Drill-through reporting you can link from one report to another.

There are number of ways to Drill Through:

Drill Through is developed with two reports

• Parent Report
• Child Report

Q.38) What is the difference between list and crosstab?

Ans)

List

• List report show the data in row and column(detail information of report).
• List can be converted to Crosstab

Crosstab

• Crosstab report show the data in grids, dimensions in row and column and measures in cells or in intersection point.
• Crosstab can’t be converted to list. There is no direct option available in Report Studio to convert the cross tab to list.

Q.39) Give the options which are available after importing data using TI?

Ans)

• Create Cube and populate data.
• Create and Update dimensions.
• Re-create Cube. It destroys the existing cube definitions and overwrites it.

Q.40) Define Prolog tab?

Ans) The procedure is executed before the data source for the TI is opened. TI directly goes to Epilog if the data source for the process is none and if there is no data source then Metadata and data tabs are ignored.

Q.41) What is the cube size?

Ans) 2.0 GB. It depends as per your project requirements.

Q.42) What kind of system requirement is needed to run TM1 for a small installation?

Ans) The minimum requirement to run the sample TM1 servers provided will be:

• Disk Space: Minimum 500 MB
• Memory: Minimum 2 GB RAM
• Processor: Pentium 4 or higher
• OS: Windows 2003(x86, x64), Windows 2008(x86, x64), Windows 7(x86, x64), Linux

Q.43) What are the steps to troubleshoot the FEEDERS?

Ans)

• Use Rules Tracer will be used to assist in the development and debugging of rules.
• The functionality of Rule Tracer is available in Cube Viewer

Q.44) Define the logic behind the Sparsity in cubes?

Ans) The more dimensions a cube has, the greater will be the degree of sparsity.

Q.45) Name the components of report studio?

Ans) 

• Insertable Objects pane
• Properties pane
• Explorer bar
• Report Viewer

Q.46) Name the components of Reportnet? 

Ans) 

-Cognos connection

-Query Studio

-Report Studio

Q.47) Define Cognos Connection?

Ans) It is a Web portal for Cognos 8 and a component that interacts with the Content Store. It is a front end to publish, find, manage, organize, and view the organization’s business intelligence data.

Q.48) Define the Cognos Reporting tool?

Ans) It’s a reporting tool from IBM which helps in reporting and analysis of various data from a data warehouse.

Q.49) Define is catalog and types of catalogs in Cognos?

Ans) the catalog is a file containing the information (Database tables) that Impromptu users need to create reports. Types of catalogs are:

• Personal
• Distributed
• Shared
• Secured

Q.50) Define Query Subject?

Ans) A Query Subject is a collection of Query Items. Generally, query items have a defined relationship. It is primarily a database table upon which query action takes place.