Adding Content for Use by Report Creators

The resources that can be used as inputs to SAS Web Report Studio are information maps, stored processes, banner images, fonts, and existing reports from other locations. SAS Web Report Studio uses the metadata server to access these resources, so these resources must be registered in the metadata repository. The following sections describe how to add this metadata to the repository.

Typically, the addition and changes of content is accomplished from within SAS Web Report Studio. Alternatively, you can also add content from within SAS Management Console.

Including a stored process in a report section is one of the ways in which to obtain data for the report. Each report section can contain multiple stored processes. When the report section is rendered, the output of each included stored process is displayed. Users can also run stored processes directly from within SAS Web Report Studio.

You cannot use SAS Web Report Studio to modify the query that is generated from the stored process, but you can use SAS Web Report Studio to add layout elements such as headers, footers, images, and text that are independent of the stored process output.

You can convert existing SAS programs into stored processes for use in SAS Web Report Studio. The programs can be parameterized, which enables users to input data in response to prompts.

In SAS Web Report Studio 4.31, if users manually clear a non-required stored process prompt that has a default value, the cleared prompt filters the results based on the default value. To enable the cleared prompt to return all possible values, you can make all possible values as the default for the prompt.

Prompted parameter values are transferred to the stored process as macro variables. To convert an existing program to a stored process, follow these steps:

For example, to alter this SAS program:

%let year=2002;
title "Sports & Outdoors Sales &year";
proc print data=sashelp.orsales;
                where year=&year;
run;

to become a stored process, change the code to look like this:

%global year;
*processbody;
%stpbegin;

title "Sports & Outdoors Sales &year";
proc print data=sashelp.orsales;
                where year=&year; /* &year is a parameter from a user prompt */
run;

%stpend;

Stored process output that will be included in a report must be generated through the Output Delivery System (ODS). Output that is generated in other ways, such as with PUT statements, is not accessible from SAS Web Report Studio. The %STPBEGIN and %STPEND macros in the stored process code ensure that ODS is used to generate the output.

The ODS output type for each stored process is determined by the manner in which the stored process is registered and executed. The ODS output type should not be controlled by making changes to the stored process code (neither by setting the value of the stored process input parameter _RESULT, nor by explicit ODS statements).

The following table indicates how the style is determined for stored process output.

To make a stored process available to users of SAS Web Report Studio, follow these steps:

To learn more about stored processes, see the SAS Stored Processes: Developer's Guide.

You can customize the fonts that are available for tables and graphs in the report. SAS Web Report Studio (and SAS Web Report Viewer, if it is installed) uses the default fonts that are loaded from the following files:

The ServerFonts.xml and the ClientFonts.xml files are not modifiable.

To supply custom font definitions, create and edit the following files:

You can create these files from the LocalServerFonts.xml.sample and LocalClientFonts.xml.sample files that reside in the SAS-configuration-directory \Lev1\Web\Applications\SASWebReportStudio4.3\customer folder. To create the files:

Each sample file contains information about adding fonts. Here is the general format for the font information in the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <fonts>
    <font actualfont="Arial" displayfont="Arial" />
    <!-- more fonts -->
  </fonts>

In the preceding code sample, the actualfont attribute is the font name that is stored in the report. The value for this attribute should match the name of the font on the system. If they differ, a font substitution can occur. The displayfont attribute is the font name that is displayed to users.

In the UNIX and z/OS environments, fonts must be installed correctly and loaded by the JVM in order for SAS Web Report Studio to render them correctly. Both custom fonts, as well as true type fonts supplied by SAS, should be installed in the jre.../lib/fonts directory. See your UNIX or z/OS documentation for commands that apply to font installations.

If you plan to use SAS Web Report Viewer to render reports, create and edit the LocalServerFonts.xml and LocalClientFonts.xml file for SAS Web Report Viewer in a similar way. Make a copy of each respective sample file in the SAS-configuration-directory\Lev1\Web\Applications\SASWebReportViewer4.3\customer directory and add your fonts to the copy.

SAS Web Report Studio (and SAS Web Report Viewer, if applicable) must be reconfigured and redeployed after the custom font files are created or modified. For details, see Rebuilding the SAS Web Applications in SAS Intelligence Platform: Middle-Tier Administration Guide.

SAS Web Report Studio enables you to open PDF files from within the application. To enable the availability of PDF files, upload the files to a folder that is visible to SAS Web Report Studio.

To upload PDF files for availability in SAS Web Report Studio, follow these steps:

You can now view the PDF file or files within SAS Web Report Studio. For information about opening PDF files within SAS Web Report Studio, see the SAS Web Report Studio User's Guide.

By default, SAS Web Report Studio can interact with information maps regardless of their location within the folder structure. In some situations, you might choose to establish a more controlled environment. For example, you might limit the availability of all relational information maps because some of those information maps include row-level permissions.

To constrain SAS Web Report Studio so that it interacts only with information maps that are in designated locations, follow these steps in the SAS Management Console:

You can specify more than one path for the rootlocations property. If you list multiple locations, separate the entries with commas. With these settings, a relational information map is eligible for use in SAS Web Report Studio only if it is located in the folder path (or its subdirectories).

In addition to enabling users to create new reports, SAS Web Report Studio enables users to work with reports that were created elsewhere. Importing a report is the process of retrieving the XML file that defines a report and then adding that report to your report storage structure. The retrieved XML file is written to the appropriate directory within your content server, and a corresponding metadata object is created and stored in a parallel location in the metadata repository.

A report that you import into a new metadata repository will render properly only if all of the report's underlying components (such as an information map, a stored process, and the data sources) are available in the appropriate locations in the new repository's report storage structure. To import a report, follow these steps:

You can use the Output Delivery System (ODS) to make legacy SAS reports available in a SAS Intelligence environment. For example, you might have a collection of legacy reports that were created using a SAS Program Editor, SAS Enterprise Guide, or SAS IntrNet. You can use ODS to write those reports directly to the ReportStudio storage structure. SAS Web Report Studio treats the ODS output as a report, allowing a user to display, move, rename, and delete the output as with any other report. However, this type of report cannot be edited from SAS Web Report Studio.

To write ODS output directly to the report storage structure, use the SAS Report XML tag set and the SASXPRRP access method in the FILENAME statement. When you use the SASXPRRP access method in the FILENAME statement, a SAS Business Intelligence Protocol (SBIP) (footnote1) URL identifies the external file to which you want to write. If your process generates multiple files in the same location, the SBIP URL should refer to a directory rather than to a specific file.

A trailing slash in the SBIP URL is required when specifying a directory. If the specified file or directory already exists, it is overwritten.

The following options to the SASXPRRP access method are required unless otherwise indicated:

For example, the following code outputs SAS Report XML to the specified report storage container:

filename dest sasxprrp
 "SBIP://METASERVER/Department1/2008/Users/xyz/Reports"
   userid="xyz" password="bip2004" domain="thisDomain"
   OMRHost="bipsvrxyz.na.sas.com" OMRPort="9999" OMRUser="xyz"
   OMRPassword="bip2004" OMRReposName="FOUNDATION"
   ;

option noovp;
ods sasreport file="myreport.xml" path=dest;
proc print data=sashelp.class;
run;
ods sasreport close;