Hope that i am using the correct terms and making sense. Client lost their server and does not have a backup of their model.xml and cpf files. The packages are deployed in Cognos and the deployment file are in the Cognos folder. Is there a way to recreate the model.xml file? 

It has been a LONG time since I had to think about this, but yes - you can create a Framework Manager model from a deployed package. The (BIG) caveat is that in most instances, a package will contain only a subset of the data contained in the FM model it was published from, so you can only get back that subset.

I just checked, and there is still a support article that describes the steps:

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/how-recover-parts-corrupted-or-lost-framework-manager-model

Good luck!

MF.

Hi Brenda,

In the Cognos install location (in the bin64\utilities folder) There's a utility call CMTools that can be used to recover the model.xml from your package. It will recover the XML and then the next problem is getting Framework Manager to open it properly. In Cognos 10.2.2 and the early versions of Cognos 11 it was not a problem, but I tried it with version 12 and it gave me problems. If CMTools doesn't recover a useable XML file then your only hope is going to be some third-part tool like Motio.

-syd

Brenda,

IBM provides a way to do this directly, Mark listed it below.  You can also use a 3rd party tool to make quick work of the same.  Here is a short guide on how to do exactly that. 
https://bspsoftware.document360.io/docs/recover-modelxml-package-cognos

The easiest way I found out is:

• extract the deployment
• goto the data folder
• select e.g. 0.dat and extract with 7-zip the contents to model.xml
• open the xml in framework manager

that's all