Overview of User Reports

Comparison of Ad Hoc and User-Defined Reports

Ad Hoc Reports and User-Defined Reports

User reports are SAS programs that you create and import to SAS Decision Manager so that you can customize reports to meet your business requirements. The ad hoc report enables you to develop, test, and run your report within SAS Decision Manager. The user-defined report can be developed either within or external to SAS Decision Manager. It requires a SAS program and the associated auxiliary files to be installed in a directory that is available to SAS Decision Manager. Using ad hoc reports, you modify and submit your code from the SAS Editor within the Create an Ad Hoc Report window.

A user-defined report is a report that is available for reporting on all models in SAS Decision Manager. The user-defined report requires three files to be installed in your server's file structure:

a SAS program to create the report
a report template XML file that specifies the report requirements, such as report name and the number of required models to run the report
a SAS program file that lists the SAS Decision Manager global macro variables and macros that are used in your report

After you have these three files, you use the Manage Templates function to upload the files to the SAS Content Server.

The ad hoc report can be used to develop, test, and debug user-defined reports. When your ad hoc report is ready for a production environment, you can create the report template XML file and the macro file, and install the three files in the user-defined report file structure.

Comparison of Ad Hoc and User-Defined Reports

Report Difference	Ad Hoc Report	User-Defined Report
Version	An ad hoc report is defined and can be run only under the version where it was created.	A user-defined report can be run under any project version.
Report template	An ad hoc report does not require a template.	A user-defined report requires a template to define the report parameters.
Report results	Each time an ad hoc report is run, the existing report is overwritten.	Each time a user-defined report is run, a new report is created on the Reports page.
Location of SAS files used to generate the report	The ad hoc report SAS program is stored on the Reports page for the version where it was created.	The user-defined report SAS files are uploaded to the SAS Content Server.

Output Created by User Reports

The first time you create a report, SAS Decision Manager creates a report on the Reports page.

Each time you create a new ad hoc report, the following files are created:

the report in either HTML, PDF, or RTF format
smm_userCode.sas
taskCode.log
taskCode.sas

Each time you create a new user-defined report, the following files are created:

the report in either HTML, PDF, or RTF format
taskCode.log
taskCode.sas

CAUTION:

The wizard overwrites the output files if an output file of the same name already exists.

Here is a description of the ad hoc report output files:

Report File	Description
report-name.html	This file is the report output in HTML format.
report-name.pdf	This file is the report output in PDF format.
report-name.rtf	This file is the report output in RTF format.
smm_userCode.sas	This file contains the SAS program report code that was submitted in the Create an Ad Hoc Report window.
taskCode.log	This file is the log file that contains messages from running the SAS code to create the report.
taskCode.sas	This file is the SAS code that is used to create the report. The file contains the user-defined report code as well as code that was generated by SAS Decision Manager to create the report.

You can see the contents of these files by selecting them on the Reports page. You can also see the taskCode.sas file and the taskCode.log files.

Last updated: February 22, 2017