How do you move a synonym and have any reports or charts redirected to where the synonym has moved to?

After our first round of content, we found out that our application folder layout was not the most efficient or understandable. We want to move the synonyms to a new folder structure, but we cannot figure out how to change a report or chart to use the new folder. Is there any way to accomplish this?

Thanks.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FP Mod Chuck,

Make sure if you have any APP PATH commands in the code, they contain the new location.

Change Reporting Server Application Directory list to include the new location.

As BabakNYC mentioned, unless you have hard coded APP PATH or APP PREPENDPATH, Focus will use the application path set in Reporting Server so you may not have to do anything special.

The way Focus work is to read the application path (folders) from RS in the order they are entered until he finds the (first occurrence) master name that match the TABLE FILE XYZ per example.
The above is true except if you have coded

SET APP PATH mynewpath
TABLE FILE XYZ
...

SET PREPENDPATH mynewpath
TABLE FILE XYZ
...

TABLE FILE mynewpath/XYZ
...

In the above cases, file XYZ will be retrieve from mynewpath.

Thank you for your response.

If I understand, if there is no application path defined, it will follow what is in the Reporting Server. If you want to override or direct to specific path, then you should hard code it.

This brings up a couple of questions. If there are 2 synonyms with the same name test.mas in 2 different folders with the different names, folder abc and folder def, which one would it use?

If it just goes through the order they are entered, is that the order they are created or an alphabetic order, which would need to take into account the recursive nature of sub folders?

The concern I have is whether to always hardcode the path to avoid a future maintenance issue when new synonyms are created.

I make my greatest effort not to have duplicate synonyms. This obviates the need for issuing explicit APP PATH or PREPENDPATH commands. Especially in a production environment you're really creating extra work by maintaining multiple versions of the same synonym.

In QA or DEV, multiple copies are often unavoidable. In those situations, I issue APP PATH commands instead of depending on the default order.

Is there a specific reason why you'd want to keep multiple copies of the same synonym?

quote:

This brings up a couple of questions. If there are 2 synonyms with the same name test.mas in 2 different folders with the different names, folder abc and folder def, which one would it use?

If your application path order is as follow and you have master file test.mas in both abc AND def :

abc
def
ghi

The test.mas master file used will be the one in abc.

If your path is as :

ghi
def
abc

The test.mas master file used will be the one in def.

quote:

If it just goes through the order they are entered, is that the order they are created or an alphabetic order, which would need to take into account the recursive nature of sub folders?

Nothing related to the creation or alphabetic order since you can order the folder the way you want.

quote:

The concern I have is whether to always hardcode the path to avoid a future maintenance issue when new synonyms are created.

My own answer : try, as most as possible, to NEVER hardcode a path unless you have no choice (or for test purposes as Babak mentioned). The RS path is way less maintenance then having to open each fex and change the path.

Thank you very much both of you. This helps me set the direction we need to take.