Creating custom report templates

You can create your own report template to have greater control over the appearance of the report and what information from the topology goes in the report.

About this task

Report templates can be placed in any type of project. You can place report templates in the same project as the topologies that you want to use as data for the report, or you can put report templates in their own project.

Procedure

Open the Report Design perspective by clicking Window > Open Perspective > Other, selecting the Report Design perspective, and clicking OK. This perspective includes an editor for BIRT report templates and the Data Explorer view, which shows the data to be placed into the report.
Create a report:
1. Click File > New > Other.
2. In the New window, expand Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools and select Report.
3. Click Next.
4. In the File Name field, type a name for the report, with the extension .rptdesign, such as topology_report.rptdesign.
5. Click Finish.
The report is created and opens in the BIRT report editor.
Import the data source and data sets that are provided with the topology report templates. You can create your own data source and sets, but it is faster to import the data source and sets.
1. Open the Report Explorer view.
2. Expand Topology Model Reports.
3. Copy the Topology Model Catalog Report template into your project.
4. Double-click this report template to open it.
5. Open the Data Explorer view and expand both Data Sources and Data Sets.
6. Right-click the Topology Model data source and then click Copy.
7. Return to your new report, right-click the Data Sources folder in the Data Explorer view, and then click Paste.
8. In the same way, copy the data sets from the topology catalog report template to your report. You can use these data sets to display information about a topology in your report. For example, the Unit data set contains information about the units in the topology.
Select a data source that represents the data that you want to add to the report. If none of the predefined data sources show the data that you want, you can create your own data source, as described in Creating custom data sets.
Add the data to the report:
1. From the Palette view, drag a field to the report. For example, drag a List onto the report to print the results of a query for each selected element type in the topology.
2. Add data to the field by dragging it from the data source in the Data Explorer view to the field on the report. For example, if you have created a data set based on the unit type, you can drag the unit's display name or name onto the report.
3. Add any other fields that you want in the report. You can add headings and captions by dragging a Label or Text from the Palette to the report.
Save the report.
Run the report:
1. Open the Deployment perspective.
2. In the Project Explorer view, right-click a topology and then click Report As > Report Configurations.
3. In the Report window, click BIRT Report at left and then click the New launch configuration button above it.
4. Name the new report configuration.
5. On the Main tab, click the radio button next to the Location field and select your report template in the Location field.
6. In the Data Sources list, select the data source you created in the report.
7. With the data source selected, click Add, select the topology that you want to generate the report from, and click OK.
8. Under Report Output, specify the location for the report.
9. In the Format list, select a format for the report.
10. Click Apply.
11. Click Report.