Hi Taylor,
This happens sometimes when Cognos tries to process too much metadata at once - the load can essentially hang indefinitely, and unfortunately the cancel option doesn't always kill the background process. A couple of things you might try before doing a full "clear metadata":
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Restart the service on the server side to force the stuck metadata job to end.
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Reload just the schema you need by creating a fresh connection pointing only to that table or schema, rather than the whole database.
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Export what you already built (models, reports, etc.) before clearing metadata, so you can re-import without fully rebuilding.
When I was looking into a similar issue, I found it helpful to map out a smaller, "validated" dataset first - kind of like testing on a minimal slice before scaling up. I actually wrote about that approach here: https://fakephonepemod.com/ - different context, but the same principle applies: validate small first, then expand.
Hope that helps you avoid having to start completely from scratch.
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James Thompson
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