Symptom
The following error message is displayed when opening various content in Cognos Connection on Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7.0 :
"PF-SRV-6116 Unable to process the document, target is not valid or the target was not received."
Problem
An error is displayed while attempting to launch IBM Cognos Administration but end-users are able to access IBM Cognos Connection without problem. IIS 7 has been configured to host the IBM Cognos 8 BI web content.
Cause
By default handlers defined in IIS 7.0 for either CGI or ISAPI modules do not process the full path information in a URI.
Solution
In order for Cognos Administration to function properly the handler mapping created in IIS 7 must be manually edited to allow full path information to be processed by the handler. Depending on how IIS is set up the handler mapping will have been written to one of the following files: C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationhost.config or c8_install_location/c8/cgi-bin/web.config.
Steps:
1. Search both of these files for the following entry:
<add name="CGI-cognos" path="*.cgi" verb="*" modules="CgiModule" resourceType="Unspecified" />
2. Make a backup of the file this entry is found in and then modify this entry by adding the allowPathInfo="true" attribute such that it resembles the following:
<add name="CGI-cognos" path="*.cgi" verb="*" modules="CgiModule" resourceType="Unspecified" allowPathInfo="true" />
3. Save the modified file.
4. Restart IIS.