Overview of the InForm system architecture

The InForm software is a four-tiered software design. The following illustration is a logical representation of the system architecture.

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InForm system architecture

Tier	Software component hosted on the tier	Description
Client	Web browser	Displays the pages of a study and receives user input. Note: Cognos 10.2.2 does not support Google Chrome or Apple Safari.
Web	Web server and gateway software (MS-IIS)	Services requests to and from the web browser.
	Cognos 10 BI Gateway	Manages the transfer of information from the Web server to another server. Provides secure access to the Cognos 10 BI Reporting Server.
Application	InForm application server	Logical server that acts as a transaction manager for InForm studies under the InForm Service. The InForm Server handles caching and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) packages. Each study is associated with an InForm study application server. If the Reporting and Analysis is installed, the InForm Model Updater Service runs on the InForm Server to synchronize the clinical model.
	Cognos 10 BI Report server	Runs reporting-related requests for operating system services. There is one Cognos 10 BI Service per physical server machine.
	Cognos Content Manager	Manages the storage of customer application data, including security, configuration data, models, metrics, report specifications, and report output. Content Manager is needed to publish packages, retrieve or store report specifications, manage scheduling information, and manage the Cognos namespace
	Oracle Directory Server	Provides secure Admin access to InForm Reporting.
Data	Oracle database instances for:	InForm study database—Stores the study components and the clinical data. Studies typically share an instance of the Oracle database with the InForm Admin schema. InForm Admin database—Used by the InForm Service to manage all the studies on a physical machine. There is one InForm Admin database per InForm Service. InForm Reporting database—Stores views for Cognos Reporting through the Reporting and Analysis module. The InForm Reporting database can share an instance of the Oracle database with the InForm Admin and study databases or can reside in a separate Oracle database instance. In an installation in which Reporting is resides in a separate database instance, each InForm study database has a corresponding InForm Reporting database. Cognos 10 BI Content Store—Stores user-created reporting objects such as folders, saved reports, and saved views. The Content Store can share an instance of the Oracle database with the InForm Admin and study databases or can reside in a separate Oracle database instance.