in
Cognos 8.A user entry is created and maintained in a third-party
authentication provider to uniquely identify a human or a computer
account. You cannot create user entries in
Cognos 8.
Information about users, such as first and last names, passwords, IDs, locales, and email addresses, is stored in the providers. However, this may not be all the information required by Cognos 8. For example, it does not specify the location of the users’ personal folders, or format preferences for viewing reports. This additional information about users is stored in Cognos 8, but when addressed in Cognos 8, the information appears as part of the external namespace.
If you configured the Cognos Series 7 authentication
provider 
,
a user from that namespace must belong to at least one Access Manager
user class for the user to be usable in Cognos 8.
For example, if you create a new user in Series 7 Access Manager and assign the user to a user class but then remove the user from that user class, you cannot log on as that user in Cognos 8.
For Series 7 and NTLM authentication providers, you cannot maintain associated properties and items when you delete and re-create a user. For example, if a user creates an object in My Folders, and then that user is deleted, the My Folders objects are no longer associated with that user. If a user with the same name is re-created, the objects are not reinstated.
If you use an LDAP server, the stability of My Folders objects depends on how you use the IDs. If the configuration of the LDAP provider uses the default attribute of dn for the Unique identifier parameter, a reinstated user with the same name keeps the My Folders objects of the original user. If you change the Unique identifier parameter to a unique attribute set by the LDAP server, for example, nsuniqueid for Sun Java System, the association of My Folders objects is lost for a deleted user and a new My Folders will be created for a user of the same name.
You can delete, copy, and change user profiles. For more information, see Managing User Profiles.
A locale specifies linguistic information and cultural conventions for character type, collation, format of date and time, currency unit, and messages. You can specify locales for individual products, content, servers, authors, and users in Cognos 8.
User locale refers to the product and content locales for each Cognos 8 user. Requests from users arrive with an associated locale. Cognos 8 must determine the language and locale preferences of users and enforce an appropriate response locale when you distribute reports in different languages.
A user locale specifies the default settings that a user wants to use for formatting dates, times, currency, and numbers. Cognos 8 uses this information to present data to the user.
Cognos 8 obtains a value for user locale by checking these sources, in the order listed:
user preference settings
If the user sets the user preference settings in Cognos Connection, Cognos 8 uses these settings for the user’s product and content locale and for default formatting options. The user preference settings override the values obtained from the authentication provider.
authentication provider
If the authentication provider has locale settings that are configured, Cognos 8 uses these values for the user’s product and content locale.
browser setting
Anonymous and guest users cannot set user preference settings. For these users, Cognos 8 obtains a user locale from the browser stored on the user’s computer.
