You can use Rational® Publishing Engine to
design reports based on data provided by products and applications
that incorporate the Rational Reporting for Document
Generation component,
such as the Rational solution for Collaborative
Lifecycle Management applications.
These templates can then be imported into the products or applications
for use in their interfaces.
Before you begin
Before you begin using
Rational Publishing Engine to
customize reports, a license key server must be set up with valid
licenses for your use. Contact your administrator to verify that this
has been done and to obtain the license server path. If you do not
already have
Rational Publishing Engine installed,
you or your administrator must install it and verify that you can
connect to the licensing server.
Determine the version of Rational Reporting for Document
Generation that
is bundled with the integrated product (or "data provider").
That version determines which template version you must use when designing
report templates for the product. Ensure that you are familiar with
the compatibility restrictions for newer versions of Rational Publishing Engine with
older versions of Rational Reporting for Document
Generation.
Procedure
Rational Publishing Engine provides
the ability to author new document-style report templates.You
can design templates that collect and report on data in a product
or application, and if that product or application includes Rational Reporting for Document
Generation,
you can import these templates and generate document-style reports
within the context of the product or application.
A Rational Publishing Engine license
is required to author templates; a Rational Publishing Engine license
is not required to import templates and generate reports from
them within the context of a product or application that includes Rational Reporting for Document
Generation.
To create reports with
Rational Publishing Engine that
use product or application data, complete the following steps:
1: Connect to Rational Publishing Engine
If
you do not already have
Rational Publishing Engine installed,
you or your administrator must install it and then connect to the
licensing server. You can use the
Rational Publishing Engine Document
Studio to import application sources and build report templates. You
can also can use the
Rational Publishing Engine Launcher
to build document specifications, which incorporate report templates,
and generate reports.
2: Design report templates
Important: You must use a template version that is supported
by the version of
Rational Reporting for Document
Generation that
is bundled with the integrated product (or
"data provider").
To determine which version is bundled, check with the product's reporting
administrator. For details, see
Version compatibility.
- Start the Rational Publishing Engine Document
Studio to build a report template design.
- Create or import a template design. This design determines the
layout of the report. Rational Publishing Engine comes
with a set of sample reports and tutorials that you can explore.
Important: Update the template version number in the Load Template
API so that you are using a version that is compatible with the data
provider. If the new template version is specified and an older template
is opened, then the template version is updated for that template.
Supporting concepts in the
Rational Publishing Engine information
center:
Supporting tasks in the
Rational Publishing Engine information
center:
Metadata and importing templates:
3: Connect to the application data source
Determine
the data source schema that you want to import. You can use the elements
in the schema to add queries on application data to the template.
These queries specify what pieces of information are ultimately generated
in the report.
- Review the available data schemas that you want to use in the
report. Each of the products has a unique schema or set of schemas.
- Construct a URL that points to the data source schema.
- Add a new data source in the Document studio.
Supporting tasks in the
Rational Publishing Engine information
center:
4: Add application-based data queries to
the template
Use the Document Studio to add data from the data
sources to an existing report design template. The data queries that
you add determine what pieces of data are generated in various parts
of the report output. You must select data points in the Data Source
Schemas view and add them in a hierarchical order to the template.
Supporting
concepts in the
Rational Publishing Engine information
center:
Supporting tasks in the
Rational Publishing Engine information
center:
5: Create document specification
Once
you have finished creating the report template and populating it with
application data points, you can generate a report in a variety of
formats. When you generate a report, you must connect to the data
source that contains the information on which you want to run the
report. You do this by specifying a URI that points to the application
repository that contains the relevant data.
You can use filters,
which are more specific versions of the general data source URI, to
point to specific subsets of data so that Rational Publishing Engine does
not attempt to retrieve more information than necessary from the application
repository during report generation. These filters must be broad enough
to retrieve all necessary data referenced by the template or the generated
report will be incomplete.
- Specify the templates to include in the report.
- Specify the output format and location.
- Determine the data source URI. You can point to a general data
source, which retrieves all the related data within the repository,
or you can optionally use filters, which are more specific URIs, specifying
parameters, that retrieve a smaller set of data from the repository.
- Enter the data source URI.
- Optional: enter login credentials to access the specified data
source. If this document specification is going to be shared with
other users, you might want to leave the credentials fields blank.
If the credentials are not specified and a user attempts to run a
report from the document specification, he is prompted for credentials.
If credentials are specified and a user attempts to run the report,
the saved credentials are used to access the repository even though
they are not that user’s credentials.
Supporting concepts in the
Rational Publishing Engine information
center:
6: Generate report
You can generate
reports from document specifications. When you generate a report,
you must be connected to the data source(s) that supplies the data
for the report. For information on generating documents using Rational Publishing Engine, Defining document specifications with the Launcher
7: Import the custom document-style report
You
can import this report into your application, and then users can generate
document-style reports using the Create a Report wizard
in the web interface. See your product information center for more
information about importing the report.