Retrieving reporting information

Create a custom report by creating a report web address that gathers data about assets, users, and the repository. You can produce data in XML and JSON formats.

To display report information, use an external reporting product such IBM® Rational® Insight or Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT).

You can use Rational Insight to generate reports from IBM Rational Asset Manager data and other Rational products. Rational Insight is a common reporting solution that helps you get consistent metrics from across the organization and tool sets to objectively measure status and progress. It implements standard measurements, reports, and dashboards to provide accurate insight into systems and software delivery. For more information, see: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/rentrpt/v1r0m0/index.jsp and Configure Rational Insight for Rational Asset Manager

Govern more effectively with reports

Managing software assets goes beyond submitting them to a repository and managing them through consumption. Over time, looking at the changing elements, the models and trends of asset details, consumption use cases, and users information can help companies evaluate the needs of their current business strategies.

Users with different roles need different reports:

Business analysts, administrators, asset owners, and asset consumers need different information to evaluate the repository use. For example, administrators want to know when a role was given to a user. Asset owners want to know who is subscribed to their assets. Asset consumers want to know what the most popular assets are.

Retrieve data from Rational Asset Manager by using report URLs

Users can generate reports without needing technical knowledge.

The data that is used in the reports comes from a user-created URLs that return repository and asset information. The data is XML that can either be downloaded from a web browser or accessed directly from a reporting tool like BIRT. Different report paths, or URLs, return different types of data. Report paths can also take parameters that allow for query-like functionality; for example, the fromTime and toTime parameters can be used to retrieve only activities that occurred between timestamps.

Types of reports

The different report paths are targeted for different types of reports. The following types of reports are available:
  • Asset information
  • Related assets
  • Activity logs and information
  • Subscriptions for assets and users
  • User roles assignments and activities
  • Usage of assets in build processes
  • Artifact usage

Syntax for creating report URLS

Reporting URLs use the Rational Asset Manager web services URL, /reporting/, and then one or more report paths and parameters (ReportPath:Parameter=ParameterValue) that determine the data. The following example shows the basic syntax:

http://Host Name:Port/ram.ws/reporting/ReportPath:Parameter=ParameterValue

If the report takes multiple parameters, separate multiple parameters by using commas:

http://.../reporting/ReportPath:Parameter1=Parameter1Value,Parameter2=Parameter2Value

Sometimes to create reports, you must use multiple report paths. Separate multiple report paths with a vertical bar (|)

To learn about the report paths that you can use to create URLs, view sample reports, and combine data URLs so that the result of one URL can become the parameter for another URL, see the references at the end of this topic.

Report URLs return data as either XML or JSON serialized objects

Report data is produced as serialized objects. By default, report URLs output data in XML. You can output data in JSON format by adding settings:format=json| before other report paths. For example:
http://Host Name:Port/ram.ws/reporting/settings:format=json|ReportPath:Parameter=ParameterValue

Finding the web services URL

Report URLs use the Rational Asset Manager web services URL, and not the application URL, as the base. To retrieve the web services URL:
  1. Log on to the Rational Asset Manager web client.
  2. Click the Help icon and then click Extensions.
  3. On the Extensions page, in the Web Services section, select and copy the Repository location URL, which is the web services URL that you use to build report URLs.

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