Actuate e.Reporting

An OverviewSyed Amzad Ali

What is e.Reporting?

e.Reporting : The process of summarizing and clearly communicating the data collected through various means through the use of web browsers.

Actuate is an enterprise reporting solution introduced by Actuate Corporation in 1996.

Actuate e.Reporting Suite

e.Report Designer. Developers use e.Report Designer to create basic

Actuate Reports. e.Reporting System

Administrators use the e.Reporting System to manage, generate, and control access to Actuate reports and other files in a Report Encyclopedia volume. e.Reporting System includes:

Actuate e.Reporting Suite

- e.Reporting Server, The underlying server software that manages Encyclopedia

volumes.- Management Console,

A web application that administrators use to maintain Encyclopedia volume user profiles, reports, and report generation schedules.

- Actuate Active Portal, The interface between a web server and Encyclopedia volumes

that gives users web browser access to e.reports.

Actuate e.Reporting Suite

e.Report Designer Professional. Developers use this object oriented application to create

advanced reports.

e.Report Designer Java Edition. A Java enabled Report Designer.

e.Spreadsheet Designer. A report designer to make spreadsheet like reports.

Actuate architecture

Actuate Report Generation Process

Data sources• XML

• ODBC

• EJBs

• Java Objects

• COM objects

• CORBA/DCOM

• Ascii flat files

• Excel files

• Word documents

• Etc …

Databases• Oracle

• Sybase

• IBM DB2

• Informix Online

• MS SQLServer

• Progress

• Etc …

EJBEJB

COMCOM

e.RD Pro

ROD

ROX

Report Server

DHTMLe.Spreadsheets

VTF

Encyclopedia

Management Console

Create Manage Deliver

e.Report Designer Professional

Fast report design development and maintenance

– Report development wizard– Wizard cues– Content templates– Visual design– Simple database connections– Sorting and grouping tools –– Component-based report development– Visual layout– Referencing and subclassing

components

Replaces complex htp and htf packages which were used to generate report earlier.

Decrease the turnout time of the report.

Provide more control over report and makes report more user friendly.

KEY FEATURES USE

Development power and precision-Actuate Basic

-Universal page layout

-Data access flexibility

-Output format flexibility

Personalized, interactive, actionable reports

–Flexible report distribution

–Browser scripting control

–Page-level security

–Intelligent Report navigability

KEY FEATURES

e.Report Designer Professional

e.Report Designer Professional

Report development wizard – e.Report Designer Pro offers a step-by-step wizard to guide developers through creating new e.Report designs. Both data access and layout are handled by the wizard, which generates a finished e.Report that's ready to run.

Advantage : Rapid Application Development

e.RD Pro Features

Wizard cues - Visual cues in the design wizard enable developers to preview what the content will look like as they make changes to design options.

e.RD Pro Features

Content templates - e.Report Designer Pro supports fast deployment with preconfigured e.Report templates. These user-defined templates can specify everything from corporate standard formatting to data access operations, giving Web developers a convenient starting point for fulfilling common report needs while ensuring consistency from design to design.

e.RD Pro Features

Visual design - e.Report Designer Pro supports codeless report design. After creating content with the wizard, users can adjust layout and add new objects using simple drag-and-drop operations.

e.RD Pro Features

Simple database connections – With e.Report Designer Pro, database connections can be preconfigured so that users are spared from having to know and enter complex database connection information.

e.RD Pro Features

Sorting and grouping tools - Re-entrant tools allow users to visually add and change sorting and grouping of the e.Report design.

e.RD Pro Features

e.RD Pro Features

Component-based report development –e.Report Designer Pro allows you to publish customized components in libraries. These components–which specify report elements and methods that control the components' behavior–can be reused across multiple designs, which enables you to create new designs faster, while you ensure consistency from design to design. In addition, you can offer components to your end-users to enable them to develop and customize their own reports to extend the reports you provide.

Visual layout – Developers can design enterprise reports simply by dragging and dropping data and formatting components in a visual development environment. Most designs can be completed simply by setting properties that control component behavior and appearance.

e.RD Pro Features

Referencing and subclassing components – With e.Report Designer Pro, report components are reused across designs through referencing or subclassing. Developers can maintain library-based designs by making changes only in the source library - all designs that reference that library component will automatically be updated. Developers also have the flexibility to override certain characteristics of a component by subclassing the component from the library, so that they can change characteristics they want, while inheriting all other characteristics.

e.RD Pro Features

Actuate Basic – e.Report Designer Pro features Actuate Basic, a programming language with object-oriented extensions. Actuate Basic enables you to override methods associated with components, so that you have maximum control over your Information Delivery options. Using Actuate Basic, developers can precisely control every aspect of enterprise reports, including structure, content, data retrieval operations, formatting, and delivery.

e.RD Pro Features

Universal Page Layout – e.Report Designer Pro's Universal Page Layout capabilities enable you to create reports that meet nearly any formatting requirements to create nearly any look and feel.

e.RD Pro Features

Data access flexibility – With e.Report Designer Professional, you can develop report designs that display information from practically any data source, including transaction databases, business logic layers, data warehouses, flat files, and many more.

e.RD Pro Features

Output format flexibility – e.Report Designer Professional lets you create report designs that can be output as high-resolution DHTML pages, standard HTML pages, Adobe PDF documents, or XML content. This means that your end-users can have reports any way they want them, and can even print reports that look precisely the same on paper as they do on the Web site. For XML, e.Report Designer Professional enables developers to assign properties to components to add XML tags to specific fields so that the resulting reports can conform to any DTD. As a result, you can create a single report design that delivers information for both visual and electronic consumption.

e.RD Pro Features

Flexible report distribution - Reports created with e.Report Designer Pro can be deployed to the Web as on-demand or as saved content. Automatic versioning, archiving and scheduled generation enable Actuate reports to be distributed to a large user base with ease.

e.RD Pro Features

Browser Scripting Control – Using e.Report Designer Professional's Browser Scripting Control, you can easily create actionable reports for your end-users. The Browser Scripting Control enables you to create forms-based reports through which users can specify preferences for requesting new information.

e.RD Pro Features

Page-Level Security – During the report design phase, developers can assign properties to report components that determine which users can access information contained in the report, through the Page-Level Security function. This enables end-users to automatically receive personalized views of enterprise reports based on their identity.

e.RD Pro Features

Report navigability – Actuate's unique SmartSearch and automatic NavBar generation features are automatically available with all e.Reports developed with e.Report Designer Professional, with no added coding or other effort required. These two interactive features make it easy for users to find precisely the information they need.

e.RD Pro Features

Common Acronyms

Acronym DefinitionDHTML Dynamic Hypertext Markup LanguageGUI Graphical User InterfaceODBC Open Database ConnectivitySQL Structured Query LanguageXML Extensible Markup LanguageXSL Extensible Stylesheet LanguageXSLT Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation

ROD Report Object Design - contains the report designROI Report Object Instance - contains the viewable reportROX Report Object Executable file - contains the instructions for

generating and viewing a report object