Hi,

I have an HTML report that consolidates about 15 procedures onto one screen output. Rather than chaining the procedures together into one .fex, I chose to put them in an html page to control the printing output.

When I run the report, some sections will load right away, some take their time, and others return a "page cannot be displayed" error. I am pretty sure I am hitting the server too hard, because if I split the procedures into two html files, they usually return every section without the error.

Even when it does work properly, it still takes a long time to run. I have investigated scheduling via report caster, but I don't believe I am able to schedule a html page, just procedures.

I thought of a possible solution, which is to take each individual procedure, schedule it with report caster and then publish it back to the MRE. I would then build a html page that imports these casted results, and would load quickly. Each time I re-ran the report, I would over-write the old html reports, and somehow update the consolidated html report with the new values.

This did not work, as the report caster publishes each report to the MRE with a timestamp in the folder name. How would I reference the reports if the folder always changes, right? It also recently occured to me that the html report would copy the code into itself, rather than link to it, so there would be no automatic updating anyways. Grrr.

I thought I might use the report library to generate the reports, and then somehow consolidate them, but there does not appear to be any way to access them other than through the library's own interface.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can accomplish this task?

Cheers,

Joey

15 procedures is a lot to schedule live...unless they each are really really fast.
So let caster schedule them and park each one of the output html files on your server somewhere, with a filedef, somewhere your server can read it. I have a selfserv site, so i park mine under the
D:\InetPub\wwwroot\..some directory \ some file name .htm
FILEDEF MYTAB1 DISK D:\InetPub\wwwroot\..somedirectory\mytab1.htm
FILEDEF MYTAB2 DISK D:\InetPub\wwwroot\..somedirectory\mytab2.htm
Filedef each one this way. then make them.
TABLE FILE CAR
..do stuff.
ON TABLE HOLD AS MYTAB1 FORMAT HTMTABLE
END
then your user , when hitting the launch page, or wherever you have it,
executes a program that does this:
FILEDEF...repeat all the filedefs
-RUN
-HTMLFORM BEGIN

!IBI.FIL.MYTAB1;
!IBI.FIL.MYTAB2;
..etc
-HTMLFORM END
The tables are already made, so the user wastes no time in pulling themup. Caster canmake these tables. The output of the caster job, as you set it up in caster, becomes irrelevant. Choose FORMAT ALPHA..it doesn't matter, because the fex you're running is doing all the parking of the output tables. Chose email or mre...doesn't matter.
since the fex itself has no html output, you won't be emailing anything to yourself if you just set it up as email. If you chose MRE, you're not parking anything their either. The parking is done by the fex.
Further, you can format your output tables next to each other, if you like.

-HTMLFORM BEGIN

<TABLE>
<TR><TD>!IBI.FIL.MYTAB1;</TD><TD>!IBI.FIL.MYTAB2</TD></TR>
<TR><TD COLSPAN="2">!IBI.FIL.MYTAB3;</TD></TR>
...
</TABLE>

etc.
Any help? Getting the idea?
If your fexes are really quick, you can just not filedef them at all, which will park them in the current agent, and then include your -HTMLFORM stuff at the end of your primary fex...All in One.
More than you wanted to know?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: susannah,

That's pretty much the way to go, I agree. I've settled on breaking the report into three sections for now, due to time constraints, but I will definitely use your approach on the next report that is like this one.

Thanks so much,

Joey

FYI,

I ended up creating hold files of the processed data using the APP HOLD / FORMAT FOCUS method. I repointed the reports to this new master file, and it worked without losing any of my formatting (Yay!). I scheduled the procedure to create the masterfile every morning, using Report Caster. The report runs lightning fast and I still have a job.

Cheers,

Joey

way to go!