In Cognos Content Administration, there is an Export feature to create a compressed file to load your Cognos content onto other Cognos servers.  There is one section that is somewhat dangerous, in my opinion.  This is the Directory Content options page.  Imprudent use of these settings can overwrite your destination server’s security environment and data source connections!

What you need to understand is that when you select “Include Cognos groups and roles”, you are selecting ALL Cognos groups and roles – not just the ones associated with the package or packages you selected one screen before.  And when you select “Include data sources and connections”, you are likewise selecting ALL data sources and connections.  And if you leave the default selection in place that reads “Replace existing entries” you will overwrite all of your definitions on your destination Cognos server.

Now, depending on what you want to do, this might be OK.  But on a standard single package migration, you will almost never want to deploy these options.

This might also be a good time to suggest backing up your destination server before you deploy exported content.  Better to be safe than sorry!