Reporting in EMu

Crystal != Reporting

or

Why is reporting so difficult and can we do anything about it?

Bernard MarshallKE Software

• Produce a document from the results of a search

• Export information, uni-directional

• Interpretation of original data source

• Formatting of information

• Possible computation of data (eg. totals, averages, counts, etc)

• Visual representation of search results (eg. table, graph, etc).

What is reporting?

Why do we need reports?

• Extract information in a portable format.

• Provide information in a “user-friendly” format.

• Interpret “raw results” in new and informative ways.

• Layout data in a specific pre-defined format.

• Supply information to third party products.

• Boss asked for it!

Why is it so difficult?

• Requires an understanding of the underlying data structures

• Different data models between EMu (object) and reporter (relational) data sources

• Different data representations (partial dates, etc)

• Need to group fields to get correct table structure

• Wide range of report writers available

• High level of skills required to master each report writer

• Need to deal with column names

Differing data models – ODBC, CSV

emultime.csv

emultimedia_key

irn

MulTitle

MulDescription

MulCreat.csv

MulCreator_jet

emultimedia_key

MulCreator

Differing data models - XML

How does EMu’s reporting work?

Server generates report data in XML S

Media filter adds in media paths

Filter transforms XML to required format

Files are transferred from server to client

Report writer is invoked

Report is viewed by user

texserver

xml

Media Filter

xml

Filter

CSV/XML/Other

List of files to client

CSV/XML/Other

Action

Reporter format

Report

System|Setting|Reports|Media Filter|crystal|reportsmedia

System|Setting|Reports|Filter|crystal|texxmlodbc

System|Setting|Reports|Action|crystal|Run ODBC crystal.exe

Some example reports

• Crystal

• Word

• Excel

• Powerpoint

• XML

• CSV

List/Worksheet Mode Reporting

While viewing records in List/Worksheet mode select records:

• Copy onto Windows clipboard for pasting

• Select print button for “excel” like print

Summary Reporting

While viewing matching set, produce a summary:

• Copy results of summary to clipboard in a variety of formats (eg. excel, text, rtf, etc).

• Provide a nicer printing option

Admin Reports

• Ability to run server side reports

• Provides reporting across all modules and aspects of the system

• Hooks into the client reporting system to produce standard reports

• Provides sophisticated scripting for full access to server side tables

• Difficult to write reports

XML Reports (the future)?

• XML (eXtensible Markup Language) provides a simple text based format for data interchange.

• “Report writers” can process the data to produce a variety of output formats and structures.

• XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) provides a mechanism for transforming XML into a large variety of output formats (eg, html, pdf, PCL, etc).

• Still early days (XSLT is very ugly) but removes dependency on legacy ODBC style data formats.

XML based reporting

texserver

xml

XSLT Processor

XML/HTML/PDF/PCL/Other

List of files to client

Report

XML/HTML/PDF/PCL/Other

XSLT Document

texserver

xml

List of files to client

xml

XSLT Processor

Report

XML/HTML/PDF/PCL/Other

How can we make reporting easier?Simple reports

• Are there any features that would allow simple reports to be produced more easily?

• Are there other simple reporting mechanisms that would be useful?

Complex reports

• While recognizing that complex reporting requires powerful and possibly hard to use tools, are there features that could make this process easier?