telephone:InetSoft Product Information: Accessing XML Data Sources Using Business Intelligence Software (Continued)
The data source URL can be dynamically specified by replacing the URL with a parameter, e.g., $(filename), when creating a new XML data source. The value for this ‘filename’ parameter can be specified using script or the programming API, just like with any other report parameters. If the parameter value is not provided to the report engine via script or the programming API, then the user will be prompted for it.
Every XML data source must contain at least one request. For more complex XML data sources, it is often necessary to create multiple requests. Each request can have different parameters and a different XML output type. If the URL is not HTTP based or does not need to have any parameters, simply create a request without specifying any parameters.
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XML Element Types
The XML Element Types can be specified as any one of the following pre¬defined types:
- String
- Boolean
- Float
- Double
- Char
- Byte
- Short
- Integer
- Long
- TimeInstant – Date and time
- Date – Date only
- Time – Time of day
For date and time data types, a date format can be supplied to create a date parser. The format string should be constructed according to the format specified by java.text.SimpleDateFormat class. For example, to parse the date ‘01/30/2000 01:30:59’, use the format ‘MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss’. The ‘double’ element type requires that the decimal format be specified. The format string should be constructed according to the pattern defined by the java.text.Decimal class. For example, to add commas to a number, use ‘#, ###, ###. ##’.
XML element types do not normally need to be specified. This is only necessary if the element is used in the query selection conditions as a non-string type. For example, if the birthday is compared in a conditional expression with another date value, the type must be specified for the XML element, otherwise it will be treated as a string and the comparison will be meaningless.
Since only one schema is defined for each request, a request can only generate XML data in the specified schema. A separate request must be defined in the data source for each different XML output type.
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InetSoft Viewpoint |
"To describe this visualization tool, it is basically a visual overlay on top of our data layer. We call our data layer worksheets. Then on top of that we produce something called viewsheets. With the viewsheet there are two modes of use. The first is for the end-users’ visualization. This doesn’t require any training. It’s what we call a click and select Web user interface. So in typical usage, in this mode, the users would have a dashboard interface. In a dashboard, they would have what we call output components which would show them the metrics they care about, in terms of their performance management. They could be speedometers and thermometers as well as time-series charts and graphs. There are also input components. That’s where the business parameters, the variables, come in. That could be a date range or filter selection lists. You can change the inputs in a very intuitive manner because the user only needs to select and click on this input element to manipulate different dimensions. Then they can see the effect of how the measures, or metrics, would change. This lets them analyze these business metrics is a visual exploration mode. " - Luke Liang, CEO, InetSoft |
