Creating a report for use in a Rational Reporting for Document Generation integrated product

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.

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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.

Supporting concepts
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.
  1. Start the Rational Publishing Engine Document Studio to build a report template design.
  2. 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.
  1. 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.
  2. Construct a URL that points to the data source schema.
  3. 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.

  1. Specify the templates to include in the report.
  2. Specify the output format and location.
  3. 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.
  4. Enter the data source URI.
  5. 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 without the document generation wizard

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.


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