Designing templates with Rational Rhapsody as a data source

Report designers can use Document Studio to import data source schemas and build report templates.

Before you begin

Tip: The Rational® Publishing Engine installation includes a set of sample reports. Before you begin to publish documents, you can explore this example document generation scenario. See Creating the REST sample template.
Get familiar with the Rational Rhapsody® REST service and the various URLs needed to extract data from Rational Rhapsody when you are using Rational Publishing Engine. To locate the information center for your version of Rational Rhapsody, see About the Rational Rhapsody information center.

About this task

Data is extracted by using the REST API. This interface is installed and implemented with the data source application and works independently of Rational Publishing Engine. For more information about the REST API for a data source, see the documentation for that data source.

Procedure

  1. Review Designing document templates for an overview of the template development process. Start planning the structure of your document and the data that might be included. For example, decide whether the final document will be generated from one template or from multiple template files that each contain reusable pieces of content.
  2. In the Document Studio application, create a document template.
  3. Add a data source schema to your document template. For Rational Rhapsody, you can complete the following steps:
    1. In Document Studio, click Data > Add Data Source Schema.
    2. In Schema type, select the type of the schema from the list. For Rational Rhapsody, select REST.
    3. In Schema file field, paste in the URL you identified as the data source schema and append it with ?metadata=schema. The base URL for Rational Rhapsody is: https://server:port/Rational/Rhapsody/. Appended with ?metadata=schema, the URL is: https://server:port/Rational/Rhapsody/?metadata=schema

      You can also click Browse and select a data source schema that came with your Rational Rhapsody installation. The default location for the Rational Rhapsody schema is Rational_Rhapsody_HOME\RPE\Schemas. Example: Rational_Rhapsody_HOME\RPE\Schemas\default.xsd

      When choosing a schema from a model with profiles applied and new terms, make sure the model with profiles and new terms are loaded in Rational Rhapsody.

    4. In the Data Source ID field, type a name for the data source in the template. Click Next.
    5. If the resource is in a secured server, specify the User name.
    6. If the resource is in a secured server, specify the Password.
    7. Select the Authentication Type from the list. If you do not select a type, each type is tested until the correct type is found, which might increase document generation time.
    8. Click Finish. The data source schema you selected displays in the Data Source Schema view.
  4. Add elements to the template. Rational Publishing Engine has a comprehensive set of template elements that you can use to structure your document. You can drag elements into the template content editor. For example, you can add a Container element to hold several paragraphs. Each paragraph might be controlled by a test condition that associates it only with specific data. For more information, see Template elements in the Palette view and Adding elements to a template.
  5. Use queries, attributes, and variables to add data to a template. These items specify which pieces of information are generated in the report.
  6. Add formatting and styling to the elements to control how they display in the output.
  7. Create filters to narrow the data that is pulled into the report. You can use filters, which are detailed 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 data source during report generation. These filters must be broad enough to retrieve all necessary data referenced by the template or the generated report cannot include complete data. Rational Rhapsody supports Reportable Rest v1 data sources for use in native filters. In Reportable Rest v1 native filters, you are only required to enter the text between the brackets []. The rest of the filter is generated by Rational Publishing Engine. For more information, see Reportable Rest v1. See also Filter conditions supported by REST native filters for more information.
  8. You can use a cast query filter to refine the results of a query. The type casting feature works as an alternate filter for data source elements, see Type casting for details.
  9. Create sorts to organize the data in your report.

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