Reporting

Reporting is the endeavor of providing requested data in the form of a document. There can be arbitrary reports about almost anything, but we always need to collect, extract, format and export the desired data.

Techniques

With UBIK^®, there are next to no restrictions on how to approach reporting technically. However, we do have experience with several techniques and there is a reporting plugin. Known techniques are:

UBIK.Module.Reporting HTML/PDF report generation from managed code with Scriban
SSRS SQL Server Reporting Services for data extraction from DB Views
PowerBI Paginated Reports e.g., from Excel or an Azure SQL DB

Approach

In general, reporting consists of scope definition, collection, extraction, formatting and exporting.

Scope definition

For any report, it is important to have very clear requirements about the temporal and spatial scope of the data. This means we want to know, for which time frame do we want to create a report, and precisely what kind of data is expected.

Collection

In order to make a report about something, we need to get the source data first. We have to make sure we have access to all required data in a raw way. This might be an infrastructure topic; our technique depends on how we can access the data. E.g., in some cases where UBIK^® is hosted in the cloud, SSRS might not be available if the customer's IT doesn't allow it. Next, it might be necessary to provide a DB View or managed code providing access to the raw data.

Extraction

The raw source data rarely is available in a form that can be displayed in the report directly. Hence, the next step is to process the source data into the data we need. Usually, this means getting the data into a different shape, i.e., gather data from different source objects and put the individual parts into a resulting object. However, it can also mean running statistics or aggregation functions on the raw data.

Formatting

All the data in the world is of little use if it can't be interpreted. Therefore, a crucial step in reporting is to come up with a fine representation of the data. This means mostly the layout, labelling and graphical display of the data. Depending on the chosen technique, one can use various tools to design the report. As a consequence, we must also provide the data to the reporting service in a way it can be applied. Thus, we must design our data model and the used data types according to the report's needs. Extraction and formatting therefore are co-dependent.

Exporting

Usually, the receiver of the report wants it in the form of a nice document. Hence, exporting the previously generated report as PDF or publishing it on a web page are viable options that can be discussed with the customer.