Previous Topic  Next Topic

Saving Reports

This topic describes how you can save different types of reports and also how you can save a report to a different catalog.

This topic contains the following sections:

• Saving a Report
• Saving a Report to a Different Catalog

Saving a Report

To save the changes you have made to a report, navigate to Home > Save or File > Save. Designer then save the report into the directory where the current catalog is located. You can also accomplish this operation by selecting Ctrl+S on your keyboard. If the report is newly created, Designer prompts you to specify the file name of the report. To save a report with a different name in the current directory, navigate to File > Save As.

By default, Designer saves page report files with the .cls extension. This is the format that provides optimal performance in the Report toolset. However, you can also store page report files in the following formats:

• Report Template (.rpt)
  It is a file saved in the Text format, which you can edit in any text editor.
• Self Contained Page Report (.clx)
  It is a binary report file, which contains not only the report's layout but also the catalog with its own resources.
• Page Report XML Format (.cls.xml)
  It follows the XML standard, which you can edit with both Designer and external XML editors.

For web report files, you can save them in either Web Report (.wls) or Web Report XML Format (.wls.xml); while for library component files, only in the Library Component format (.lc).

The XML report files of Report follow the XML standard. You can edit them with both Designer and external XML editors. Using XML is better for checking into source code control systems than using the binary formats.

Back to top

Saving a Report to a Different Catalog

Since the resources for a catalog file are shared by all reports based on it, if you have different developers design reports at the same time, and you want to use the same catalog in order for all the resources to be reused, you can have the developers save their reports with related resources to a "universal" catalog file. In this way, Designer can merge the to-be-saved report's resources such as queries, formulas, and parameters into the target "universal" catalog file. However, Designer does not handle concurrency issues, which means two people cannot update the "universal" catalog at the same time.

You cannot save library components to a different catalog.

To save a report to a different catalog

1. Navigate to File > Save To.
2. Browse to the location of the target catalog, then select Save. The target catalog must have the same name as the current catalog.
3. In the Warning message box, select Yes. This saves your report into the target catalog file, which means:
   • Designer copies the report and the relevant files alike to the directory where the target catalog file is located.
   • If the connection does not exist yet in the target catalog, Designer adds it using the same connection information as in the source catalog.
   • Designer merges the resources (query, formulas, parameters, and so on) that this report references in the current catalog to the target catalog. If there are any conflicts, Designer identifies them according to the Merge Catalog Option setting. For more information, see Merging Catalogs.

In this way, even while users work with their own individual catalog files, they can still publish their reports and associated resources to the target "universal" catalog file.

Back to top

Previous Topic  Next Topic