How You Access and Modify Report Components

To create or edit reports, you must access the business intelligence (BI) catalog. In the catalog, objects of type Report represent the report definition, which includes report properties and layouts.

Data models are separate objects in the catalog, usually stored in subfolders called Data Models.

Accessing the BI Catalog

You can access the BI catalog in any of the following ways:

  • In the Reports and Analytics work area, click Browse Catalog to open the BI catalog, and find your report or data model in the Folders pane.

  • In the Reports and Analytics work area, find your report and select More to go to the report directly in the catalog. The data model associated with the report should be in the Data Models subfolder within the same folder as the report.

  • Sign in to the application directly (for example: http://host:port/analytics/saw.dll) to open the catalog.

  • Sign in to the Analytics Publisher server directly (for example: http://hostname.com:7001/xmlpserver) to open the catalog.

    • Alternatively, once you are in the catalog using another method, for example, through the Reports and Analytics work area, change the final node of the URL. For example, change (http://host:port/analytics/saw.dll) to xmlpserver. So the URL you use would be: http://host:port/xmlpserver.

Predefined Reports

A special Customize option is available only:

  • For predefined reports, not data models.

  • Through direct access to the server using the /xmlpserver URL. When you find your report in the BI catalog, select Customize from the More menu.

The Customize option automatically creates a copy of a predefined report and stores it in the Shared Folders > Custom folder within the catalog. The new report is linked to the original, so that when users open or schedule the original, they are actually using the copied version.

If you don't have access to the Customize option or don't want the original version linked to the new report, make a copy of the predefined report and save it in the Custom folder.

Predefined Data Models

Don't edit predefined data models. Instead, copy the data model into the Custom folder and edit the copy. You can't create a new data model based on the transactional tables.