Working with reports

AppPerfect Monitor provides an extensive data reporting facility for data analysis and resource/capacity planning. Theoretically, data shown in the Current Status view can be considered as a report. However, there are key differences between data used for Status view and data used for reports. In general, the reports are typically used for non-realtime data. The AppPerfect Monitor Console (with its Dashboard and various views) is used for realtime data.

Available Reports

There are two types of reports provided by AppPerfect Monitor

Predefined reports : AppPerfect Monitor provides several, detailed, predefined reports for extracting and analyzing the state of the systems being monitored. These reports are non editable through the report designer. However, these reports may be used as templates to design customized user-defined reports.

Custom reports : AppPerfect Monitor recognizes the need for you to extract and analyze the monitored data in ways not addressed by the pre-defined reports. You can create reports and customize the content, layout and data specific to your needs. The next chapter provides details on how to create customized user-defined reports.

The list of all the reports currently available can be viewed by accessing the Reports tab. You can only see the reports that you have been granted access to, by the creator of the report or the administrator.

Generate and View Reports

To generate the report click the Generate & View link. You will be asked to click OK if you want to generate a new report or Cancel if you want to view existing reports. Click OK to generate a new report. You will now see a pop-up window asking you to enter parameters regarding the output format of the report (choose from PDF or HTML). You can also enter some description for your report as well as define a date time stamp for it. You can also select the start and end time for which you want to generate the report.

Note: The Start and End Time will only be available if you have selected the 'DataTimeStamp' column under the 'Filter' columns.

When you click the Generate button, AppPerfect Report Manager will get the required data from the database and arrange the data in the specified format.

Once the report is generated it immediately opens up in a view mode.

The fields to be filled in are summarised here:

Output Format: You can choose the format from one of these: html or pdf.
Report Description: You can type in a description for your report here. This is an optional field.
Define Filter Values: You can select the values of the filter columns that you have earlier selected in creating this report.

Updating Reports

For updating a report's properties, you need to click that Report ID in the Reports list. A page similar to the one for adding a new report will show up. All the properties of the report can be modified from here. Click Finish in the wizard after updating the report. A message confirming the change will be shown at the top of the page.

Scheduling Reports

For scheduling reports, you need to select the schedule link against the report name. You will be taken to a page that will allow you to specify the type of schedule: whether the report is to be generated daily, weekly, every fortnight or monthly and also allows you to specify the time at which report generation should begin. On clicking Add, the report is scheduled for execution at the appropriate time and will be executed once the scheduled time is reached.

The different fields you can see are:

Report Schedule ID: This is a unique value by which your report will be identified.
Schedule Type: Here you can select if you want a daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly schedule.
Day of Week: This field will be enabled only if you have selected a weekly or fortnightly type of schedule.
Date of Month: This field will be enabled only if you have selected a monthly type of schedule.
Generation Time: The time at which the report should be generated according to the schedule type, can be specified here.
The rest of the fields are same as that at the time of generation of the report.

Deleting Reports

To delete a report, select the check box to the left of the report name and click the Delete button. In the delete confirmation dialog that comes up click OK and the report(s) will be deleted. If Cancelis clicked no action will be taken.

Note: Deleting a report cannot be undone.