Data Source Security

You can define security for data sources using Cognos 8 authentication or data source-specific security. Defining Cognos 8 authentication for a data source does not override any security that exists for the data source itself.

Depending on the data source, one or more of the following authentication methods are available:

• no authentication

  Cognos 8 logs on to the data source without providing any signon credentials.

• Cognos 8 service credentials

  Cognos 8 logs on to the data source using the logon specified for the Cognos 8 service. Users do not require individual database signons. For production environments, however, individual database signons are generally more appropriate.

• external namespace

  Cognos 8 logs on to the data source with the same credentials used to authenticate to the specified authentication namespace. The namespace must be active, users must be logged on prior to accessing the data source, and the authentication credentials used for the namespace must be relevant for the data source authentication.

All data sources also support data source signons defined for the Everyone group or for individual users, groups, or roles . If the data source requires a data source signon, but you do not have access to a signon for this data source, you will be prompted each time you access the data source.

Cognos 8 also respects any security defined for the data source. For example, for Cognos cubes, the security may be set at the cube level. For Microsoft Analysis Server data sources, the security may be set using cube roles.