Dear all,

I am not sure if this is incredibly easy or a silly idea but I would like to be able to send a pdf file out so that the person recieving it can access the drill downs without having to link back to our webfocus system. I have tried one or two things but so far no luck. Anyone any ideas

It depends on where the linked report are created. If it is in de MRE, if it is a public report, if you need a user ID and a password, if the receiver of the basic report is already logged in.
So the idea is not silly, but the answer is not easy without all the above ifs....

Consider the fact that the drill downs will execute another request against your WebFOCUS servers and then answer your own debate .

You are basically asking for the report to be provided at a summary level with the capability of deriving the detail without rerunning any reports (and therefore not accessing your servers), so the answer is (possibly) to use active reports.

Now these are obviously HTML files and not PDF as you request but, without storing all the relevant drill downs version of the reports in a central repository and then referencing them instead of the drill down, you would still need to execute a proc on your server, so PDF is a non starter I think.

Another alternative is to use an Excel template to hold all the data required (extracted by WebFOCUS) and then have a bunch of macros that provide the level of reports upon clicking a button or link.

T

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tony A,

Thanks TonyA you have summarised my predicament perfectly. I had a feeling that it would not be possible but thought I would ask. I will have a look at Active Reports and see if that can help.

Many thanks for the responses.

Are you licensed for active reports, within some limits, from what I've seen demonstrations of it would give some capabilities. We don't have it though, so not sure on any details.

And there are some limitation:

Available since 7.1.x
Number of records you can put in one report is(depending on your explorer) limited. (from Microsoft IE with 5.000 to Firefox with 20.000)

We are not currently licensed for it so will have some discussions internally about what I am attempting to do before going ahead. Has anyone any other experiences using Active Reports?

Wouldn't "Drill Through" do what you require?

Example from the manual:

TABLE FILE GGSALES
SUM UNITS DOLLARS 
BY CATEGORY 
BY PRODUCT
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT PDF OPEN
ON TABLE SET STYLE *
TYPE=DATA, COLUMN=PRODUCT, DRILLTHROUGH=DOWN(CATEGORY PRODUCT), $
ENDSTYLE
END 
-RUN

SET SQUEEZE=ON
TABLE FILE GGSALES
SUM UNITS BUDUNITS DOLLARS BUDDOLLARS
BY CATEGORY NOPRINT 
BY PRODUCT NOPRINT
ON CATEGORY PAGE-BREAK
HEADING CENTER
"Category: <CATEGORY"
" " 
ON PRODUCT SUBHEAD
"**** Product: <PRODUCT"
BY REGION 
BY CITY
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT PDF CLOSE
ON TABLE SET STYLE *
TYPE=SUBHEAD, LINE=1, ITEM=2, DRILLTHROUGH=FIRST(CATEGORY PRODUCT), COLOR=RED, $
ENDSTYLE
END 
-RUN

I knew there was a good reason why you have "virtuoso" with your name....

I never tried this, but it looks very simple and easy to build. Thanks for the Example Francis.

You're welcome, Master!

ohhh
this is a sweet idea!
thanks for finding it francis