Republishing Reports

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Republishing Reports

Overview

Why Republish Reports

When to Republish Reports

Tips for Republishing

 

Overview

 

Each new build of EQuIS brings report improvements. To capture changes to a published report, it may need republishing and updating by an EQuIS administrator — or a non-administrator that has been granted explicit publishing permission by an administrator — either by running it through the Report Publisher again or via the Bulk or Batch Publishing method. These methods are described further in the final section, “Tips for Republishing”. Published forms also require republishing.

 

Why Republish Reports

 

EQuIS Enterprise, along with EQuIS Professional installations that do not include the EQuIS Library of reports, can only access published reports. Consequently, to provide users with the latest build functionality, reports used in Enterprise or by these Professional users require republishing. Note that Enterprise also requires report dependencies in the bin directory, as well as any module-based reports (such as those from DQM).

 

New report parameters are not configurable in user reports until republishing. The old build of the published report will not contain an ST_REPORT_PARAMETER entry for the new parameter, and thus a user report cannot save any specifications to the child table ST_USER_REPORT_PARAMETER. For more information on these tables, see Report System Tables.

 

There may also be structural changes to reports, such as updated references to third-party tools or code that has moved. If such reports are not republished, the report and those that depend on it may return an error on execution. This situation is common in custom reports that have not been recompiled recently.

 

When to Republish Reports

 

When upgrading EQuIS, determine which reports to republish by checking these locations:

the ST_MODULE system table, available to EQuIS administrators

the documented Release Notes

 

Check for Potentially Out-of-Date Reports in ST_MODULE

 

The ST_MODULE system table, available to EQuIS administrators, contains records of reports applied to the database. For users without the EQuIS Library installed, republish all published reports. Check the builds of published reports in EQuIS Professional as follows:

1.In the EQuIS Professional ribbon, select Home > Tables Tables-16. The Open window will launch, showing Data Tables.

2.In the Open window, select System Tables, then double-click on ST_MODULE.

3.Select Filter Filter-Standard-16 in the grid toolbar to turn on the Filter row.

4.Filter the MODULE_TYPE column to the 'Report.class' option.

5.Select the NAME column header to sort by name.

6.Check the latest VERSION_NUMBER for each report. If the latest entry for a report predates your current build (for example, 7.22.3.xxxxx), it may be out of date.

 

To locate the report files to republish, see Finding Report Files.

 

Check for Reports Requiring Republishing in Release Notes

 

Release notes will specify which reports require republishing. When upgrading EQuIS, check release notes for builds following the previous build of the database. For example, if upgrading from build 7.22.1 to 7.22.3, check both the 7.22.2 and 7.22.3 release notes.

 

Users without the EQuIS Library installed need all published reports republished, possibly excepting the Analytical Results II and Action Level Exceedance II reports. These reports are part of the EQuIS Professional installation even without installing the EQuIS library, as well as the EQuIS Enterprise installation. However, changes may still have occurred within these reports that necessitate republishing, such as new report parameters.

 

Tips for Republishing

 

As noted, administrators — and non-administrators that have been granted explicit publishing permission by an administrator — can follow the standard instructions on report publishing to republish a report. However, many users want to retain existing specifications in ST_REPORT_PARAMETER (such as the DEFAULT_VALUE or DATA_SOURCE) when republishing. There are several possible ways to do this:

Use the arrows on the Report Publisher's "Parameters" tab to retain existing report parameters.

Use the Bulk or Batch Publishing report publishing method, which uses a Powershell script and can be set to retain existing report parameters.

For a more manual configuration, a copy of the existing report can be retained while publishing the new report, following steps in Handling Multiple Copies of the Same Report.

 

Note: This approach does not transfer user reports or EQuIS Information Agents (EIAs) to the new report, although the Copy User Reports form can transfer user reports.

 
After creating an additional copy of the report, users can copy report parameter configurations from the old to the new report in ST_REPORT_PARAMETER. Alternately, a script could be run in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to compare the old and new report parameters for the old and new REPORT_IDs and update report parameters.

 

When running user reports and custom reports built on any republished reports, ensure that they function as expected. If not, rebuild them:

1.Reload the user reports in the published report.

2.Check parameters and, if needed, specify selections for new parameters.

3.Resave user reports or republish the dependent custom reports.