Hi Paulo,
These are some of the things we've generally done with ExecuteCommand, both in and out of IBM PA Cloud:
- Call TM1RunTI and/or SendEmail
- Perform Backup/Archiving of PA data and log files
- Move import/export data files between PA Server instances and across IBM PA Cloud tenants
- Perform bulk import from PA to ODBC sources (e.g., bcp for SQL Server), since ODBCOutput is only suitable for a very tiny data set
- Call custom command-line tools or scripts (anything from BAT files to PowerShell, as well as .NET, Python, etc. executables) for instance to:
- Monitor and perform basic actions (like email or log to a file), with and without PA REST API, based on certain log messages/events, thread locks/waits, etc.
- Integrate directly with non-ODBC or flat file data sources (e.g., via a native API for that data source).
- Read/log certain host machine counters (disk, memory, etc. usage)
- Stop/start other services (including PA Server instances)
I ordered this based roughly on most to least frequent use case, but I will say that integrating with non-ODBC or flat file data sources is coming up more and more often as an ask (yes, there are many ways to do this, but would be nice to have better options on the PA end). And the lack of an efficient, native PA option for bulk inserting a TM1 extract to a relational database table (vs. having to dump to a text file and do a bulk insert) is another pain point that would be great to see addressed (we logged an enhancement request for this quite a while back).
I'll close by adding that although Cognos Command Center can be used to do some of the simple tasks above (like file watching & movement) we've typically found that ExecuteCommand alternatives for simple, discrete tasks tend to perform much more efficiently overall, including in PA Cloud.
Regards,
Mike
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Michael Cowie
QueBIT Consulting
Tuscaloosa AL
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Original Message:
Sent: Mon February 22, 2021 09:03 AM
From: Paulo Monte
Subject: What are you using ExecuteCommand for in the Cloud? We want to hear from you.
Hi All,
Many customers and partners implement additional functionality not native in the product\service using ExecureCommand via a TI process.
It's a powerful way to build around the service.
We'd really like to hear about what Cloud customers (specifically cloud customers) are doing with ExecuteCommand.
Cheers,
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Paulo Monte
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