Managing Reports › Ad Hoc Reports › How Ad Hoc Reporting Works

How Ad Hoc Reporting Works

Ad hoc reporting works as follows:

1. You start the ad hoc report by first selecting the CA SDM universe in InfoView.
2. The universe maps to the CA SDM database containing corporate business information. When you connect to a universe, Web Intelligence automatically launches the document editor selected on the Web Intelligence Document Preferences page in InfoView.

   Note: For information on setting preferences, see the InfoView User's Guide.

3. Using the universe, you build queries to retrieve data to use in a report from objects grouped in folders called classes. Each class can also contain one or more subclasses. Subclasses contain objects that are a further subcategory of the objects in the upper level of the class. Classes and Objects are presented in a tree structure (hierarchy) in the Data tab.

   Note: For instructions on how to build queries for Web Intelligence documents, see the BusinessObjects Enterprise documentation.

4. After you have built your query, by adding the required objects to the Result Objects pane, and defined query filter properties, you are ready to run the query. When you run a query, the universe asks the database to retrieve the data that corresponds to the demands of each of the objects in the query. You run a query by clicking Run Query on the toolbar.

   Important! When selecting objects for your query, always choose objects, measures and filters from only one universe base class and its subclasses. If you include objects, measures and filters from multiple universe base classes in a query, you might receive unexpected results and poor performance.