Using Data Access Plug-Ins for Reporting Purposes

Reporting (i.e. display in the report bar of SiteArchitect and ContentCreator) is a special use case of data access plug-ins.

In order to offer a data access plug-in as a report in the FirstSpirit clients, the plug-in class must implement at least the aspect Reporting (see below), and various classes of the plug-in component may optionally implement various aspects to provide further functionality.

Data access plug-ins with report functionality (i.e. those plug-ins which implement the aspect Reporting) require one available application integration license slot each (see Additional documentation, "FirstSpirit AppCenter", chapter 1.6: "License model").

Follow the links to individual class pages for a list of available aspects.

• Class Data Access Plug-In
  • Aspect Reporting
    Causes SiteArchitect and ContentCreator to offer a report based on the data access plug-in's functionality.
  • Aspect ReportItemsProviding<D> (optional)
    Defines item actions that provide interactive functionality within the context of single report entries. See Report Actions (Actions on Report Entries) for more information.
  • Aspect StaticItemsProviding (optional)
    Defines item actions that provide report-wide interactive functionality. See Report Actions (Report-Wide Actions) for more information.
• Class Data Access Session
  • Aspect DataTemplating<D> (optional)
    Provides a data template and parameters which may be inserted in the template in order to display a fly-out with more detailed information about a single report entry in ContentCreator.
  • Aspect TransferSupplying<D> (optional)
    Provides supplier objects which provide data of different commodity types that may be used in drag-and-drop operations involving individual report entries.
• Class Data Stream Builder
  • Aspect Filterable (optional)
    Defines parameters which may be used to filter the report entries returned by the data stream object. The parameters are shown in a filter UI in the report panel.
  • Aspect DataAssociating<T, A> (optional)
    Specifies that entries shown in the report may be associated with elements shown in the ContentCreator preview. See Data Association for more information.

Additionally, FirstSpirit offers several means to cause display of a report and update its filter settings.

A data access plug-in that is intended for use as a report as well as in association with FS_INDEX input components should also implement aspects geared towards use with FS_INDEX components. Most importantly, the use case for drag-and-drop of data objects using a report as a source and an FS_INDEX component as a drop target requires implementation of both transfer supplier and handler aspects (see Data Access Session for more information about the aspect TransferHandling).