Advanced Reporting Overview
- Becky Weinberg (Unlicensed)
- Pamela Totas (Deactivated)
Eagle PACEâ„¢ Reporting contains three modules, General Reporting, Advanced Reporting and Client Reporting. This section describes the Advanced Reporting module.
Advanced Reporting Introduction
PACE Advanced Reporting is a module in PACE General Reporting that allows you to prepare presentation quality reports by combining an imaging component with the power of PACE Reporting. Benefits include:
Using custom fonts and font sizes
Including custom images and OLE objects
Creating multiple reports per page
Adding dynamic tables of content
Submitting custom report totals
Using the Advanced Reporting Designer Wizard to customize reports without any programmer knowledge.
Customizing reports with or without Visual Basic or ActiveReports.
Eliminating the grid look of an original report.
Saving reports in a variety of formats, including Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), rich text (.rtf), and as a text file (.txt).
Before Using Advanced Reports
Advanced Reports are based on PACE General Reports. You must create a PACE report rule and profile in the General Report component before creating an Advanced Report. Make sure the PACE General Report you create includes all of the field attributes and rollup values that you want to appear in the Advanced Report.
For information on PACE General Reports, refer to PACE General reporting.
Advanced Reports Requirements
You can create Advanced Reports without any third party software packages.
If using Visual Basic and ActiveReports to create and design Advanced Reports, make sure you have the following versions of these software packages installed on the desktop machine: Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) 6.0, VB service pack 3, and Data Dynamics ActiveReports (AR) version 2.0 or 3.0. You can also create reports using Crystal. For more information, refer to Crystal Reports. Visual Basic and ActiveReports should be installed on the developer’s machine before installing the Advanced Reporting add-on.
You can run Advanced Reports with no additional software installed on the server, since all required server run-time components are installed with the PACE Server. You can also create advanced reports without using any OLAP reports by directly connecting to PACE DB or by using PACE API.
Visual Basic .NET Certification
Advanced Reporting is certified against Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and build 4.2.1.1238 of ActiveReports for .NET by Data Dynamics, Ltd. You can use Active Reports .NET version 4.2.1.1238 or Active Reports .NET version 5.2.1013.2, version 5.2.1331.2, version 6.0.2250.0, or version 6.2.3164.0, and Crystal Reports version 11.5 to create Advanced Reports. An addin is available to enable creation of a .NET designer that runs in the PACE Server.
This addin component must be installed to develop Advanced Reports by using Visual Basic .NET.
Accessing the Advanced Reporting Features
Advanced Reporting features are located in the General Reporting main window. You need to start General Reporting before accessing the Advanced Reporting features.
To start General Reporting:
From any Eagle window, click the Eagle Navigator button to access the Eagle Navigator.
Enter General Reporting in the Start Search text box.
Click the General Reporting (Reporting Center) link to access the Reporting Center.
You see the Reporting main window.
In Build Components mode, the General Reporting main window contains three tabs, Components, Reports, and Results. These tabs contain the Advanced Reporting features, including Advanced Report Rules, Advanced Report Profiles, and completed Advanced Reports.
About Advanced Report Rules
Use Advanced Report Rules to set up the structure of an Advanced Report. You manage Advanced Report Rules using options including Delete, Copy, Rename, Publish, View Rule Parameters, History, and Usage on the Components tab. You can create new Advanced Report Rules, or edit existing ones. To access a list of Advanced Report Rules from the Components tab, open the Report Rules folder, then open the Advanced Reporting Rules folder.
About Advanced Report Profiles
Use Advanced Report Profiles to select the Advanced Report Rules you want to include in a report, and assemble a package of reports. You also specify the entities or clients to include in the report, the date settings and the values of any options in the report.
You manage Advanced Report Profiles using the options on the Reports tab. You can create a new Advanced Report Profile, or edit an existing one. You can also delete, copy, rename, publish, and view report parameters, history, and usage.
Results Tab
On the Results tab you can view completed Advanced Reports, open the reports, delete, search for, and refresh results of processing advanced reports.
Create An Advanced Report
You can create an Advanced Report using Visual Basic or the Advanced Report Designer.
Use Visual Basic to Create An Advanced Report
You can use Visual Basic 6 or Visual Basic Dot Net to create an Advanced Report. When creating an Advanced Report in Visual Basic, you must:
Create the underlying Report Profiles in PACE Report Studio.
Create any Advanced Report Options from either the Editing Advanced Report Rule dialog box or the Maintain Options/Parameters module, accessible by typing Maintain Options/Parameters in the Eagle Navigator. You may also have to create a new code and corresponding code values if the option is of the Code type.
Create an Advanced Report Rule on the Components tab of the General Reporting module.
Create an Advanced Report Profile on the Reports tab of the General Reporting module.
Design the report.
Use Advanced Report Designer Wizard to Create an Advanced Report
The Designer Wizard is simple to use and allows you to quickly create custom Advanced Reports. You can remove the grid look of an original OLAP report, and add custom formatting to the report. You can also present sub-totals and totals at the end of the report.
This allows you to easily design an Advanced Report that can be executed through the Eagle PACE Server, and build a report without having Visual Basic or ActiveReports licensed or installed on your machine.
Work With Crystal Reports
Crystal Reports is a third party package you use to design and generate presentation quality reports. PACE Advanced Reporting is integrated with Crystal Reports Crystal Reports 2008 and Crystal Reports XI Service Pack 2, 11.5.
You can create stand alone Crystal Reports in .RPT format using the Crystal Reports application. Or, you can create Crystal Reports in a Visual Basic.NET format using Visual Basic. Crystal Reports.Net Version 11.5 is supported for use with Visual Basic.NET reports.
To get started, install and configure any necessary database client software. Crystal Reports must be installed on the Server to run the reports, and on each Client machine to open and view report results. You do not have to install the Add In to create a stand alone report. Eagle recommends using a 32-bit environment since Crystal Reports is a 32 bit application that uses 32 bit drivers.
When developing an Advanced Report, use Crystal Reports to:
Change the data source on the fly. While creating a Crystal Report, you can connect to either an Oracle or SQL database directly and select a data source that exists on the Local machine. When the report is moved to a server and run, PACE changes the data source to the one that exists on the server. This is helpful when TNS names are different on the developer’s machine and the server.
Use parameters that were created in Crystal Reports. If the Crystal Report has the Parameter field, the value can be passed as an option value from an Advanced Report.
Provide internal options for report types where you need to pass the Entity, Effective Date, Begin Date, and End Date. This is especially helpful for reports created against the Data Mart database. PACE provides four internal options: *Report Entities, *Begin Date, *End Date, and *Effective Date. These are marked with an asterisk and a different color. These options are internal and non editable.