Focal Point® Reporting Server

Focal Point^® Reporting Server provides a new set of reporting capabilities to Focal Point^® 6.6.1 and later. The Reporting Server can be used to define and generate custom reports that can present data from one or more Focal Point^® workspaces, as tables or charts. The reports can be reused across multiple workspace instances.The Focal Point^® Reporting Server component is based on the following applications. These applications can be used individually or in combination:

▪ Lifecycle Query Engine (LQE): Lifecycle Query Engine is a Resource Description Framework (RDF) triple store that stores and indexes the Focal Point^® workspace data. LQE serves as a SPARQL Endpoint. It provides a query interface that can be used by applications that support OAuth protocol.

▪ Data Warehouse SPARQL Endpoint (DWSE): Data Warehouse SPARQL Endpoint is an RDF store and a SPARQL endpoint that can be used to run SPARQL queries against the data stored in the Rational Reporting Data warehouse. For example, the Rational Reporting Data warehouse stores the data from theRational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management applications.

▪ SPARQL Reporting Gateway: SPARQL Reporting Gateway is the application that provides the interface for managing and executing SPARQL queries, and for managing SPARQL Endpoints and report definitions. It also provides generic OpenSocial report gadgets for custom reports. These report gadgets can read report definitions, run associated queries, and render results based on the selected report parameters.

The Reporting Server generates reports based on the SPARQL queries that are stored in the SPARQL Reporting Gateway application. The SPARQL report queries are used to query the RDF data sources, also known as the SPARQL Endpoints. The query execution is triggered by reporting clients, and the queries use the data stored in the SPARQL Endpoints such as LQE or DWSE. For example, the queries can use the Focal Point^® data made available by the LQE, and the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management data made available by the DWSE.

Along with the SPARQL report queries, the SPARQL Reporting Gateway application also stores the associated report definitions. The report definitions are used to map the report query results to report presentations. The reporting gadgets of the SPARQL Reporting Gateway application use the report definitions to render reports in the home page of Focal Point^®.

The SPARQL queries can also be executed by third party tools such as the REST services that return the query result in an XML format. Applications such as the Rational Publishing Engine (RPE) and Microsoft Excel can use the REST services and present the data provided by them.

Focal Point^® 6.6.1 and later provides the following enhancements to support the Focal Point^® Reporting Server:

▪ Default URI for each entity in a workspace such as the user defined modules, attributes, and choice Items. These workspace specific URIs are stored in the Lifecycle Query Engine (LQE), and can be used in the SPARQL queries to generate reports on a specific workspace.

▪ Vocabulary terms export: A workspace export option to export the URI and descriptions as a .csv file that can be downloaded, and edited using a spreadsheet editor.

▪ Update workspace vocabulary: Imports a workspace vocabulary file and update the Vocabulary term URI and Descriptions for modules, attributes, and choice items.

▪ Capability to add a report as an OpenSocial gadget to the Focal Point^® home page by providing the URL of the report gadget. The URL for the report gadget can be copied from the SPARQL Gateway application.

▪ Report gallery, to select a report from the list of available reports from in the SPARQL gateway application.