Using the Report Server Manager

Products

• EUREKA:Reporter

Issue/Introduction

This technical document will explain the various uses for the Report Server Manager in Eureka Report Server version 7. Report Server Manager is a utility used to administer the Report Server. It comes installed with the Report Server. If you need to access the Report Server Manager from another machine, you can access the RSManager.html file located in the Eureka/Reporter/Server/admin directory. This will require that you set up a virtual directory on your webserver to point to the admin directory of the installation so that it can be accessed from another machine. See the section of the Admin guide entitled "Creating Alias for Reporter Server Manager" for more information on this.

 

Environment

Release:
Component: RPTSVR

Resolution

To start Report Server Manager, go to Start/Programs and find your Eureka Report Server group. In this group will be a choice for Report Server Manager.

When you open Report Server Manager, you will be presented with a login screen

The information that is displayed here was entered at the time of the Report Server's installation and was written to a file called rsmanager.properties. This file is read each time the Report Server Manager is started. Rsmanager.properties is located in the Eureka/Reporter/Server/admin/com/sterling/RsManager directory. If you entered information at install that is invalid, it can be corrected in this file for future logins to Report Server manager. These fields are relative to the backend database or scheduler database for Report Server.

Enter your user name and password and click connect to login to the Report Server Manager. If you have connected successfully, you will see a message in the bottom right corner stating "Successful Connection" and you are ready to use the Report Server Manager. If you have not connected successfully, check the information in the rsmanager.properties file to ensure that it is correct and try to connect again.

There are three tabs in the Report Server Manager - Report Info, Configuration and Query. Report Info holds all the information about jobs that have been submitted to the Report Server. Configuration holds all the information pertaining to the Report Server setup. Query contains a utility that will allow you to run sql statements against the scheduler database.

Menu bar items are Connection, Options and Help. The Connection menu allows you to connect and disconnect from the database. The Options menu contains two choices, Filter and Initialize Tables. Filter will give you buttons to use on the Report Info tab to filter out certain jobs. Initialize Tables should have been done when the Report Server was installed. And last, the Help menu will allow you to view the Report Server Manager Help files.

 

Report Info Tab

This tab contains information about the jobs that have been submitted to the Report Server. There are three folders here - JobData, JobSchedule and JobRun. These folders correspond to database tables (by the same names) on the Report Server scheduler database. Click on the first folder, JobData, and all of the jobs currently on the Report Server are listed in the right pane.

The columns listed here correspond to fields in the JobData table on the database. Double clicking on the JobData folder will give you a list of the jobs in the left pane. Clicking on one job will show the database fields relative to that job in the right pane.

The information in these fields was populated based on the selections of the user when the job was submitted.

Similarly, the JobSchedule and JobRun folders will function the same. The JobSchedule folder will contain information about how often the job will be run, when the job will run next, how many runs were requested, etc. JobRun contains information about a specific run of this job. There can be multiple JobRun entries for each entry under the JobData and JobSchedule folders.

If you are interested in one job and want to see all of this data for just this one job, start with JobData and double click on the job name. This will show you the JobSchedule and JobRun info for this job.

Notice for the job in the above screen print, the RequestId is 32. This corresponds to the 32-Pending line in the JobSchedule table and the 32-1, 32-2, and 32-3 lines in the JobRun table.

If you have a large number of jobs submitted to the Report Server, you may want to filter this list to display only certain jobs. For example, there are cases when you need to know the current activity on the Report Server. For example, which jobs are executing. Notice in the screen print below, job number 36 is listed as processing on the JobSchedule drop down list.

This list could be filtered to only show those jobs that are processing. The database stores the status in a field called "status" in the JobSchedule table. The following is a list of possible status codes for a job:

0-Pending
1-Updating
2-Processing
3-Held
4-Completed
5-Published
6-Requested immediately.

In order to filter out those jobs that are currently processing, start by selecting the top level JobSchedule folder. Select Options/Filter (or you can click on the funnel icon on the toolbar.) to open the Filter Expression dialog box. Since processing jobs have a status of 2, enter status = 2 and click Apply.

Notice that now the only job visible in the list is RequestId 36, which is the only job that is currently processing. Similarly, this can be done for other fields such as NextJobRun > 05/20/03. To get the complete list of jobs back, delete your filter expression and click Apply.

 

Configuration Tab

This tab contains configuration information about the Report Server.

There are 4 folders here: Configuration, ServerInfo, ApplicationServer and PortalInfo. Again, these four folders correspond to tables of the same name on the scheduler database. Starting with the Configuration folder, there are 4 columns in the Configuration folder. Displaying this information functions just as the Report Info tab does. If you click on the Configuration folder once, it will show you the grid view in the right pane

 

If you double click on the Configuration folder and then click the folder that is the next request id, this will display the tree view in the right pane

The four fields here are UseJobRunView, PollingInterval, NextRequestId, and NextBatchProfileId.

UseJobRunView by default is unchecked. It is used when the database does not support nested outer joins. It changes the way report engine will query the scheduler database. Users wishing to use this feature must manually create the JobRunView.

PollingInterval controls 3 things. 1) How often the report engine polls for new jobs to run 2) How often the publisher polls for new jobs to be published to the Portal 3) How long rsipub.exe waits when running an on demand job before the wait page appears. Once the wait page appears, this setting also controls the polling interval before it checks to see if the job is completed. This setting is in seconds.

NextRequestId is the next available ID that will be assigned to the next job that is submitted to the Report Server.

NextBatchProfileId is assigned the next time a batch profile is created and saved in the publisher utility. Batch Profiles are used when submitting jobs to the Portal to be bursted (hot object jobs).

 

The ServerInfo folder contains configuration information that was entered when the Report Server was installed such as your input/output directories, the webserver aliases for these directories and the http address for your web server.

The MetaDataDir setting is the directory used to store Metadata files uploaded by the Metadata Manager for downloading by Reporter Designer clients. This is a mode of sharing metadata between users and does not affect the metadata files that jobs on the Report Server are using.

 

The Application Server folder contains more configuration information entered at install.

 

Report Server administrators can check here when jobs have become stuck in a pending status on the Report Server. If the CurNumOnDemand or CurNumProduction settings have reached the MaxNumOnDemand or MaxNumProduction settings respectively, jobs of that type will not run until the CurNum setting falls below the MaxNum setting. For example, in the above screen print, if 20 clients are running an OnDemand job, the CurNumOnDemand setting will reach 20, which is equal to the MaxNumOnDemand setting. The next person to run an OnDemand job may see an error stating that the Report Server cannot run the job at this time or they may just see the check status screen that will not go away. These settings will tell you if you have reached the set limit.

NOTE: Notice the OutputDir and InputDir settings are found here as well as on the ServerInfo screen. If you have multiple application servers, or if your application server is on one machine and your web server is on another, the application server might use a different access path. The settings in both ServerInfo and ApplicationServer still have to be the same physical space, but C:/Eureka/Reporter/Server/rsdocs/output on one machine might just be G:/output on another.

The OptimalLoad setting, AssignedJobsOnly setting and InService setting are mainly used in a load balancing situation.

OptimalLoad tells Report Server how many jobs it can run before the next job needs to be assigned to another Report Server in a load-balancing environment.
AssignedJobsOnly tells Report Server to only run jobs that were specifically sent to this application server during submission. If "first available" was checked, this Report Server will not run the job.
The InService checkbox is toggled when the rsstarter service starts. This puts this Report Server into the pool to be available to run jobs.

If you are only using one Report Server in your environment, OptimalLoad will not affect you, AssignedJobsOnly should always be unchecked and InService should always be checked when the RsStarter service is started and ready to take requests.

 

The PortalInfo folder contains information about the Portal or Portals that the Report Server can publish to. This information can also be found in pubadmin. Pubadmin will allow editing of Portal information as well as adding a new Portal to publish to. Both Report Server Manager and Pubadmin write to the same table on the database (PortalInfo).

 

Notice that the address contains just the host name, no http and no port number. There is also a field called Port, which is the Portal's port number. The UserName and Password fields need to be a valid Portal user that has administrative permissions.

 

Query Tab

The Query tab is a utility that allows you to submit SQL statements to the scheduler database. This differs from the Filter utility on the Report Info tab because the Query tab submits the SQL to the database as you have entered it. Clicking Execute will execute the SQL and display the results.