Chapter 1. Introduction

Table of Contents

Report Level Actions
Creating an Ad-hoc Report
Filtering Information
Saving an Ad-hoc Report
Viewing an Ad-hoc Report
Publishing an Ad-hoc Report
Deleting an Ad-hoc Report
Band Level Actions
Creating a Band
Moving a Band
Deleting a Band

Elixir Ad-hoc Report is a Web application that enables the designing and navigation of Business Intelligence reports. Ad-hoc Report provides several categories of bands for you to design tailor-made reports with numerous pieces of useful information, including tables, charts, cubes, images, date, time and user-input text. Ad-hoc Report features drag & drop editing without any requirement of writing code. You can easily create custom reports in a few clicks.

An Ad-hoc Report has two modes - the Analysis mode for editing and the Report mode for viewing. The modes can be easily changed to fit into different situations.

The two modes help you maintain user permissions according to your organization's access policies. Certain users might only be given viewing permissions and not editing permissions. Those users can view the reports in repost mode. For example, the default user called test has only viewing permissions.

You can easily structure your report into different sections by adding section breaks as required. This helps to organize the report cleanly and present the info in a clear and concise format to the user.

You can easily preview the report in real time, as you construct your report, by clicking the various bands.

Navigate to http://<host>:8080/elx/ to view the Elixir Ambience Web Console. Type the domain name (for example, “eno”, “foxx”, etc), user name and password to sign in.

The default domain is eno. The default user name is admin. The default password is sa.

Report Level Actions

This section describes the various report level actions.

Creating an Ad-hoc Report

Navigate to http://<host>:8080/elx/ to view the Elixir Ambience Web Console. Type the domain name (for example, “eno”, “foxx”, etc), user name and password to sign in. After signing into the Elixir Ambience Web Console, you can create an Ad-hoc Report by completing the following steps:

  1. Navigate to the Create tab, click Ad-hoc Report, and click the universe (in the following screen shot, CARS is the universe that is present) in which to create the report.

    Figure 1.1. Report Main Screen

    Report Main Screen
  2. Select a location in the repository from the drop-down list. Enter the file name for the report in the Filename field. Click Create. A blank Ad-hoc Report opens in the Analysis mode, ready for editing. Read on for more detailed information.

Filtering Information

To filter information in all bands to just the information you want to view:

  1. Click the Filter icon ().

  2. Click the Add Filter icon ()

  3. Select the columns to filter as shown:

    Figure 1.2. Select Filter Columns

    Select Filter Columns
  4. Enable the filters as desired. An example is as follows:

    Figure 1.3. Enable Filters

    Enable Filters

To add more filters, click the Add Filter icon ().

To delete a filter, click the Delete Filter icon ().

Note

You can only filter on dates and enumerated fields (nominals and ordinals). Database administrators who design the Universe, decide on which fields are enumerated and can be filtered.

Saving an Ad-hoc Report

To save your Ad-hoc Report, complete one of the following:

  • Click the Save button. A message pops up, saying “Save successful”.

  • Click the Save As... button. The Save As window opens, allowing you to select a location in the repository and enter the new file name.

Viewing an Ad-hoc Report

When you need to view your work-in-progress Ad-hoc Report, click the Report button. The output of the Ad-hoc Report displays in the browser.

Publishing an Ad-hoc Report

To publish an Ad-hoc Report, click the Publish button. The Publish As window opens, allowing you to select a location in the repository and enter the new file name. By default, the new file name will end with -published.report to distinguish it from the original editable report. If you launch the published report later by opening it from Ambience Web Interface > Repository, it displays as a read-only report in the browser.

After publishing your report, you can view it as many times as you want. Users only need to have view permisions to view the report.

Note

One Ad-hoc Report can have multiple published files. Even if the original editable report is deleted, the published reports will still exist and allow viewing, though there might be errors during record loading.

Deleting an Ad-hoc Report

Deleting an Ad-hoc Report is done from Ambience Web Interface > Repository. Locate the Ad-hoc Report file in the repository, click the file and click Delete from the right pane.