Migration of Cognos7.4 Transformer to Cognos8.4

Today I needed to migrate Cognos Transformer 7.4 models to Cognos 8.4.

The iqd's have been created with the externalize method in Framework Manager.

Series 7 IQD bridge is not installed.

First test was to run a model by using the Open With ... function (together with browsing to

the cogtr.exe application). That failed:

That's a confusing error message because Cognos.INI is not used anymore in this version (it's the CS7G.ini, where I entered the correct database connection strings).

Off course, the batch file kicked off in SSIS containing "c:\program files\cognos\c8\bin\cogtr.exe" -n -s -kLOGON=%DBCRED%"d:\cube\cube model\model.mdl" also failed.

After that I opened the application cogtr.exe itself. From Transformer I browsed to a model and opened it. Guess what? No problems where shown. This means, the following change in the SSIS-execute process task should have the same impact:

Executable: c:\program files\cognos\c8\bin\cogtr.exe

Arguments: -n -s -kLOGON=%DBCRED%"d:\cube\cube model\model.mdl

WorkingDirectory: c:\program files\cognos\c8\bin\

This change was successful indeed.

Honestly, I have no clue about the root cause of this misbehaviour.

Anyway, the 'workaround' works.