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Actuate iServer Questions:

What is AFC?

Actuate Foundation Classes. This is the base class.

What are the Actuate features that can be tested only with iServer?

Scheduling, Sending Email Notification. Archiving, Page Level Security Etc

What are API that can be used to customize the Active Portal for JSP?

Not aware of this . Haven’t worked on Active Portal . But I have Customized Report Cast using by modifying Achtmls

Management Console – it is a tool for distributing & Managing report in report encyclopedia volume

Iserver services –

Message distribution – Accepts messages from application & balances these messages across the actuate servers in the cluster.

Factory Services – generates report

View Services

Encylopedia Services – it is reposatry of all information about the volume such as users, privileges, group, notification, report files & folders

AFC Methods

1 New() – Initializes the object2 Start() – Initializes the connection & the data stream3 Build() – Build method reads data rows from the data stream,

instantiates its content & pass data row to content object4 BuildFromRow() – Passes the data row to its control

Finish()

Privilege access

1. None – No access2. Read – see view & downloads3. Secure Read – View Only DHTML Format, Download not possible4. Write – Create , Change & rename files & folders5. Delete – Delete files & folders6. Execute – Run & Schedule Jobs7. Grant – Change files & folders privileges8. Visible - See the file or folder but prohibit viewing content of

file

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Q What is LDAP

Ans - LDAP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, is an Internet protocol that email and other programs use to look up information from a server.

Q. Does the actute having default Datasource provider for XML?

YES

Q. ACL stands for?

Access Control List

Q : What is ACDEFRAG ?

A : It is one of the Actuate Report Encyclopedia utilities. It lets you defragment Report Encyclopedia files. The utilities must be run while the Report Server processes are not running. There is a process that runs at 5:15 in the morning by default. Every night at 5:15, the server automatically checks the consistency of the encyclopedia to see if everything is still ok. You can run a manual ACDEFRAG from the command line to make sure that things are ok.

Q : Backup of Actuate on Unix

A : You can backup the Actuate report Encyclopedia -- There are two ways -- you will need to stop report server first for either method -- 1. Physical backup, i.e., make a copy of the admin, request, and object folders/directories; 2. Logical backup, i.e., run the acexport utility to generate an export file. Please see Chapter 5 of the "e.Reporting Server Guide" for details on how to use acexport

Q : What is the difference between WebAgent and ReportCast?

A : There is no difference between WebAgent and ReportCast. Before Actuate 4.0 it was called Web Agent and from Actuate 4.0 it is called Report Cast. It provides access to the Actuate e.Reporting Server from the World Wide Web. Using ReportCast or WebAgent, you can access and work with reports in the Actuate Report Encyclopedia with any web browser.

Q : Is there a format to pass the user name and password via a query string so they user is not prompted ?

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A : HTTP:USERNAME:PASSWORD@WEBSERVERNAMEACWEB EPORTSERVERNAME

Q : How to move the report Execuitable from QA Box Report Server to Prod Report Server?

A : Open admin desktop and login to both servers. Then drag and drop the report from one window to another. Only thing to check is that the developers haven't hardcoded the database source.

Q : How to call a Java API from Actuate?

A : You can use CreateJavaObject or CreateJavaClassHandle method to access Java API. For example to create an object of Java ArrayList, your code may be as follows - dim objArrayList as object set objArrayList=CreateJavaClassHandle("java.util.ArrayList") dim objArrayListInst as object set objArrayListInst=objArrayList.ArrayList() Make sure that Java runtime environment is already set where you are running the report.

Q. What is page level security?

It is a security to a report page at the User level.In PLS, user can able to see only those pages to which he has given a privelege to access.

Q : what is Page Level Security?

A : For this you need to buy Advanced eReporting Server Under this you can create a huge report, which will create only one .roi and on the basis of the roll, users can access parts of it. Rolls are created in the Encyclopedia and assigned in the Devwb. So a same report can be shared among different users with different access rights. You can refer to an example of it under actuatedevwbexamplespagesecuritysecuredetail.rod

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Q HOW TO PUBLISH A REPORT?

To publish a report, you use a web browser, a web server, an Encyclopedia volume, and Management Console. To locate and view a report, a report user uses Actuate Active Portal.

Q What are actuate smart reports?

It is a collection of Javascript files would let the users choose the fields want when they running the reports from the web.these Javascript files would sit on the report cast.

Q : How to set up an archive driver in order to archive reports?

A : Right click onthe encyclopedia and go to the Auto Archive Tab. In the Archive Driver field put the location to the archive driver. eg: d:Actuate5serverexamplesarchivearchive.dll

Also, in that same directory serverexamplesarchive is a txt and a doc

file. It explains in detail the process to setup archiving.

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Q : How to pass the unique ID from another application to the Actuate Report?

A : Basically, create the report with ad-hoc parameters. Then open it via URL passing the parameters for the report in the URL. Works great with JSP or

Q : What is AcLeftRightPageList?

A : What is AcLeftRightPageList? If we set the properties of AcLeftRightPageList as true starts the

first page as a

right-hand page. if we set the property as False,

AcLeftRightPageList starts the

first page as a left-hand page.

Q : What is AcTitleBodyPageList?

A : In AcTitleBodyPageList class builds a page list with a title page, followed

by all other pages of another style.

Q : What is AcSimplePagelist?

A : In AcSimplePagelist report style in which all pages have the same layout.

Q : Does actuate need any specific web browser to display reports on internet?

A : The user requests a report using a web browser. The request is received by the web server (e.g. Apache) and it passes the request to the Actuate ReportCast server. This in turn passes the request to the relevant Actuate Server, which returns a report page in the Actuate internal format (ROI). This gets translated to dHTML by the ReportCast Server and passed to the Web Server which delivers the dHTML report to the users browser. In simple terms the request URL goes from Apache to ReportCast to Actuate Server, then the report goes back to ReportCast, and Apache to the browser.If you want to deliver a 'normal' Actuate report via the internet then you need to have a web server in addition to the Actuate ReportCast Server (also sometimes called the Actuate Web Server).

What SOAP stands for?

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Simple object access protocol.

The Information Delivery API helps integrate applications developed using J2EE or Microsoft .Net with the Actuate iServer. Using IDAPI you can perform tasks such as uploading of files to the Actuate iServer, downloading files from the iServer, generating a report on-demand, scheduling a report, sending eMail notification when a job completes, manage security(users, privileges), etc.

IDAPI uses SOAP over HTTP messaging for communication between the iServer and the client.

Active portal for .Net

Using Active Portal for .NET, developers can easily tailor their Web-based user interface for Information Applications or seamlessly integrate reporting and analytic content from the Actuate iServer with their existing ASP-based applications. As a result, users across the enterprise will have intuitive, zero-training access to key enterprise data, deployed efficiently to meet their evolving requirements.

High level architecture for reports involves three separate applications, web application and Actuate i-Server, Active Portal.Net.

Components:

1. Actuate i-Server :

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Actuate i-server is used to for tasks such as to host the actuate reports, which can be executed by ASP application on demand or can be scheduled for some particular date time. Authentication and Authorization for Actuate server is externalize thru RSSE. Provide the Services for View/Execute/Schedule and manage reports.

RSSE (Report Server Security Extension)

Actuate internally uses a component for using external Users, Roles and groups known as RSSE. So the task of authentication and authorization of users/roles happen thru RSSE.

Following operations are performed thru RSSE.

i. Authenticate and Authorize users.ii. Fetch users/roles/groups in actuate.iii. Creating folder structure for Groups.

2. Active Portal.Net :Active portal for .NET is a web application of an actuate interface provided to perform report related activities like view/ execute/schedule reports.

APSE (Active Portal Security Extension)

Active Portal.Net has its own security mechanism that can be customized using a configurable custom component known as APSE (Active Portal Security Extension)

Application uses APSE viz. Security Manager Assembly to integrate ASP Application with Active Portal.Net and provide Single Sign On functionality.

3. Actuate Web Service: Actuate provides web services to interact with the reports server and to perform various operation related to reports.

Following are some of the operations web application does with the help of web services

i. Fetching reports based on the Users/Roles.ii. Fetching reports based on the report permissions.iii. Assign report rights to the users/roles.iv. Execute report

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v. Schedule report.vi. Delete report.

Actuate iServer

Actuate Encyclopedia volume is a repository for various report items and data such as access privileges and requests for report generation and printing.

The services that manage the information and requests are collectively known as Actuate iServer

Actuate iServer supports Storing report documents in and viewing a report from an encyclopedia volume Managing users and security information Report generation and server side printing of third party reports such as Crystal &

SQRIBE reports Supports 2 kinds of configurations: Stand-alone & Cluster

Stand-Alone Configuration

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Cluster Configuration

iServer Services Encyclopedia Service View Service Factory Service Message Distribution Service

Encyclopedia Service Controls Encyclopedia Volume administration and secures access to the volume and its contents Manages content such as reports, users, roles and notification groups Manages report generation and print requests Performs volume tasks such as creation and deletion of volume folders & adding, moving and

deletion of files

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View Service Handles requests to view the reports ( both ROI & DOI) View process supports viewing the report in DHTML format when the user views the report

using a web browser Supports conversion of actuate documents to XML format for use with other web applications Allows viewing the report in PDF format for printing

Factory Service Processes Report execution requests and print requests Report generation requests are scheduled and batched, these are stored in the encyclopedia

volume The encyclopedia service dispatches the requests internally to the encyclopedia volume Printing jobs are batched printing requests. Actuate iServer stores the schedules for printing

jobs in an Encyclopedia volume. The factory process generates a report from an executable(ROX or DOX) file and manages

printing of the report using a printer available to the iServer machine Open server process manages generation and printing of a third party report

Message Distribution service Dispatches Actuate Information Delivery API requests that come to Actuate iServer from clients,

users, and applications. The Message Distribution service authenticates each message and forwards it to the proper

Actuate iServer service. Actuate iServer cluster load balancing is a part of the Message Distribution service.

Why Actuate?

The main advantages are it is easy to use, and its programmability. Actuate reports can be viewed from Actuate End User Desktop. With the help of Actuate Web Agent, the reports can be viewed from any web client also. This doesn’t require any ActiveX to be installed in the system. When it comes to programmability, Actuate uses Visual Basic. All the basic language functionality of Visual Basic 3.0 is available in Actuate. So the learning curve of the programmers is too less. The next advantage in a programmer's view is that it is highly Object Oriented. One can make objects and reuse the objects in Actuate. Reusability makes the report design faster as one can make commonly used components and standardize the reports with company logo etc. By doing so change in a single point will make changes in all the reports.

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 To make a simple report, it is not needed to write codes, it can be made only by dragging and dropping. Security is the next big advantage of Actuate. Administrator can fix security of each report by using Actuate Administrative Desktop. Centralized Report management is possible by Actuate Administrative Desktop.

Config Key :

Set the Config Key to ODBCConnection

Config Connection:

<Config>

<Runtime>

<ConnectOptions

Type="ODBCConnection">

<Property

PropName="DataSource">

epl123

</Property>

<Property

PropName="UserName">

epldev

</Property>

<Property

PropName="Password">

epl#$123

</Property>

</ConnectOptions>

</Runtime>

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</Config>

Actuate 9 Benefits

Actuate 9 extends the breadth of reporting capabilities offered through the Collaborative Reporting Architecture, including

An open source-based design environment, now boasting more than 250,000 users An ad-hoc web reporting option available through iServer

Interactive, end-user report personalization that can be added to any Actuate deployment

A standards-based portlet presentation layer to better fit in corporate environments

Workgroup deployment capabilities for smaller, single-server projects

Information Objects generated directly from e.Reports

Open Data Access connectors for web services, RSS feeds, PeopleSoft trees and SAP BW InfoCubes

We are introducing the Report Collaboration Architecture which harnesses the power of the Eclipse Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) Open Source project while offering significant new deployment opportunities to customers.

Migration of Actuate 6 to Actuate 9

Migration of .ROD from Actuate-6 to Actuate-9

1. Before upgrade to Actuate 9 version need to change the connection of .ROD in Actuate 6 environment.

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2. Then open the version 6 designs using Version 9 eRD Pro. It will prompt to convert. Be sure to backup Version 6 files before upgrade. Actuate is not backward compatible. Once the report is converted to Version 9 format, it can’t go back.

3. Then recompile the .ROD in version 9.

Migration of encyclopedia from Actuate-6 to Actuate-9

1. For in-place upgrade install version9 on top of the version6 iServer.It will automatically be converted to the version9 architecture. However take a backup of the encyclopedia before running the upgrade just in case something happens during the upgrade process.

2. If we are not doing an in-place upgrade, then we will simply need to take both the version6 and version9 iServers offline and then copy over the encyclopedia from version6 to version9. Then when we have to start up the version9 iServer, it will automatically upgrade the encyclopedia to the version9 architecture.

Notes: In the Actuate version 9 series, Actuate iPortal replaces Actuate Active Portal for

JSP. Actuate does not support upgrading actuate active portal for JSP to Actuate

IPortal.You must install iPortal in a separate directory from an existing Active

Portal for JSP directory.

• What it is e.reporting ?

e.reporting is a technology that draws data from diverse data sources, such as databases, flat files, information objects, and presents the data as a structured content for viewing in a web browser.

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New Features in Actuate 8 SP1

erd - pro

1. Power User Tips

2. Timesaving shortcuts

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3. New data preview

4. watch - window for debugging

5. Drawing - In latest release there is one new kind of control - Drawing. By using this easily we can create great - looking vector graphics.

6. New chart feature - draw our own charts or custom charts type.

7. dashboard components - Now we can create our own dashboard components like thermometer, traffic lights etc.

e - spreadsheets

1. Introduction to e.Spreadsheet's new Matrix reports.

2. Deliver powerful, hierarchical, irregular cross-tab reports to users without code using MatrixScript.

3. Worksheet bursting.

4 Sharing of Data Connection Information – multiple e.spreadsheet design can now share the same data connection configuration file.

5. Utilizing the power of Visual Basic code in your spreadsheet reports.

6. Using e.Spreadsheet in conjunction with Information Objects to get dynamic parameter screens and worksheet-level security.