IBM® Cognos® BI web applications and the web server

You can host the Cognos® Connection and the IBM® Cognos® BI web applications by using Microsoft™ IIS (Internet Information Services) or you can use the Apache HTTP web server.

IBM® does not provide the web server that hosts Cognos® Connection and the other IBM® Cognos® BI web applications. For Windows™, the IBM® Cognos® documentation assumes that you are using Microsoft™ IIS (Internet Information Services) but you can also use Apache HTTP.

If you use the Apache HTTP server, take care to set up the web aliases for the Cognos® web applications in the VirtualHost configuration directive of the Apache httpd.conf file correctly: be sure to order the most specific alias first (the script alias) and set directory permissions for each alias.

Example httpd.conf code snippet

The following example is from an Apache installation on a Windows™ system. The Apache server is running on the default port 80.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ScriptAlias /ibmcognos/cgi-bin "C:/cognos/cgi-bin"
      <Directory "C:/cognos/cgi-bin">
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
      </Directory>
Alias /ibmcognos "C:/cognos/webcontent"
      <Directory "C:/cognos/webcontent">
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
      </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

This httpd.conf file snippet is an example only. Be sure to configure your web aliases appropriately for your systems.