Overview of Batch Reporting

The Adapter Setup wizard in SAS IT Resource Management enables you to easily invoke and create the components that are needed for batch reporting on various adapters and domain categories. These reporting components are either supplied by SAS IT Resource Management (such as supplied SAS Enterprise Guide projects and report definitions) or created when the Adapter Setup wizard executes (such as the reporting jobs and gallery transformations).

Each component of the batch reporting process contributes to the final report output and specifies characteristics of the report such as its content, appearance, location, filters for viewing, and expiration date. You can use the supplied components and predefined process flows for your batch reports. You can also use these supplied components as templates to customize the supplied batch reports for your business needs or create your own batch reports with different reporting parameters.

The following topics in this section describe how each of the reporting components in the batch reporting architecture work together to generate IT reports and make them available for viewing. After you understand the function of each component, where it fits in the batch reporting architecture, and how it affects the other reporting components, then you can work with these components to create or modify your own batch reports if necessary.

Information maps are data sources that include a collection of data items and filters that describe and present a report-ready view of your IT resource data. Information maps are stored in IT data marts.

Report definitions in the report jobs use information maps to locate and filter the physical data for report input. Pointers to information maps are also included in the SAS Enterprise Guide projects that SAS IT Resource Management supplies.

SAS IT Resource Management supplies SAS Enterprise Guide projects for several supported adapters and domain categories. These projects manage references to data, related report tasks, code, and report results that determine how data appears in the batch reports that the Adapter Setup wizard creates.

An ITRM Gallery task is appended to each branch of a project. This task extracts the generated code of the branch and additional metadata to include it in a report definition that it creates and saves on the SAS Metadata Server for use by Gallery transformations that are in report jobs.

The ITRM Gallery task is the last component of a supplied SAS Enterprise Guide project process flow. The ITRM Gallery task specifies the filters and metadata that are used to view the report output in the Gallery Manager. When run, the ITRM Gallery task creates a report definition that includes all of the metadata and SAS code from a given branch of your SAS Enterprise Guide project. The report definition also includes the filters and additional metadata that are specified in the task.

The resulting report definitions are saved on the SAS Metadata Server and used by Gallery transformations that are in report jobs.

A report definition, created by an ITRM Gallery task and stored in the SAS Metadata Server, contains the SAS code that defines one or more reports. Report definitions include the metadata values that can be used as filters to subset reports in Gallery Manager. These properties, specified in the ITRM Gallery task that creates the report definition, include filter values for domain category, domain subcategory, job schedule frequency, and possibly other keywords that might be specific to the report.

The Gallery transformation, a component of a SAS IT Resource Management report job, identifies the report definitions that are used to create the report output when the job is run.

Gallery transformations are part of the report jobs that support the reporting functions of SAS IT Resource Management. A Gallery transformation specifies how to group together report definitions that generate reports and store output on the SAS Content Server. A Gallery transformation can also adjust the expiration date of report output, overriding the parameter that is specified in the associated report definitions.

When executed, the report job that contains the Gallery transformation uses the report definitions that the transformation identifies to generate report output.

Report jobs consist of Gallery transformations that, when executed, generate SAS code that creates reports from the report definitions that are identified in the Gallery transformation. The report jobs, stored in the IT data mart, create and delete report output.

Report output is the report that the report job creates when executed. The reports are stored on the SAS Content Server, a server that SAS IT Resource Management uses for remote content management. The SAS Content Server stores report content and the associated report properties. It also provides version control and distribution of the stored reports.

After the SAS IT Resource Management reports are available on the SAS Content Server, you can use Gallery Manager to view the reports.

The SAS Content Server is a content repository where SAS IT Resource Management stores reports and report metadata that is the output of report jobs. These report jobs include Gallery transformations that specify the repository folder path, relative to the SAS Content Server, in which to store the reports. These reports are generated and stored on the SAS Content Server in corresponding subfolders of the sasdav/ITRM folder.

Gallery Manager is a Web-based application that enables you to view and organize the SAS IT Resource Management reports that are available in the SAS Content Server.