Warning and tools for SSO support for IBM Cognos Analytics 11.X

Discovered in our support of IBM Cognos Analytics 11.0.9 is a a buggy Microsoft IIS module to avoid and a tool to automate IIS configuration.

Avoid Microsoft Application Request Routing (ARR) module 3.0.1988

To support the IIS configuration for Single Sign On/and or use of an IBM Cognos Gateway requires the addition of the IIS module: Application Request Routing.

The latest version can be found here as a Web Platform Installer (WPI) installation. As of 25-Jan-2018, this will install version 3.0.1988 (despite the fact that the download page says 3.0.1952), which – as we found out the hard way – causes an HTTP 500.50 (rewrite fail) error. This problem does not occur with the previous version 3.0.1952.

If you are installing the ARR for the first time, you can download the previous version (3.0.1952) from IExpress x64 installation

Unfortunately, if you have already installed 3.0.1988 – you may have more work to do – see our KB article – Install or update the IIS Application Request Routing module

New Tool

Setting up ICA 11 with a Gateway and in particular for Single Sign On (SSO) requires much more complex configuration of Microsoft IIS, which is prone to missing steps or miss-typing.

And, IBM appears to be constantly updating the configuration details, as the current instructions for ICA 11.0.4+ have changed since 11.0.5 (currently 11.0.9)

QueryVision recently learned of a script which greatly simplifies the process.

For details on use of the script – see our KB article – Automating ICA 11.X configuration for IIS