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iceadmin123
Participant
January 21, 2010
Question

Browser based dynamic report generation

  • January 21, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 1272 views

Here is what i want to do.

I want to allow our customers the ability, through an IE browser, authenticated to ColdFusion, to create their own reports through their own ColdFusion webpage.

-We will list or enable certain databases, certain tables and certain columns with in a table that a customer will have access to

-These columns will appear on a web page that our customers can access

-The customer will be able to see the table headings and drag and drop them into a query

-Once all of the columns are identify the customer can then create their own report

-This should work exactly the way that excel 7 works where you can attach the spreadsheet to a ODBC driver and pull all of the data from a database. the only difference here is that the customer can only see certain fields and although they are working in a hosted environment they can create their own database queries through their browser.

thank you.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

S
Scott_thornton
Known Participant
February 1, 2010

Hello,

I think you may have to discard the idea of using CF for this task, and instead look to BusinessObjects ( now owned by SAP ).

The product I know as Webi ( WebIntelligence ( could be called something different now.. maybe InfoView??)) allows user to select a Universe ( I guess this is synonomous with a datasource ) and allows users to drag onto a report stage the headings and filters thwey require and build an adhoc report.

of course this is an enterprise class of of software and will cost the Earth.

G
gfrobenius1977
Participating Frequently
February 23, 2010

It can be done.  We do this where I work everyday.  We call them Ad Hoc Reports.  We have a table that holds all the tables and views they can report against (including columns).  We have a interface allowing the users to enter report titles, subtitles, widths of columns, etc...  We even have a parameters section where they can define items like [column] [equal to / like / less than / etc...] [value] with the columns being a drop down of valid columns.  Based on the parameters they defined we build the SQL.  We also show the SQL so that if they are fluent they can just enter in SQL and not bother with the parameters (which are basically just wizards for creating the SQL).

Its very powerful and complex but can be done.  We use iText to generate our reports, cfdocument tag is way limiting.  Hope this helps.  Break it down to a wizard process for your first crack at it.

1.  User selects table/view, enters report title, subtitle

2.  Now that you have table, on the second page you can display columns they can select, give options to change label that appears on screen, so instead of seeing DOCNO they could enter in "Document Number" or something.  On this page we also let them define sorting and if certain columns are numbers should they be sum'ed/averaged, etc  at end of report

3.  Define any additional paramerters or SQL editing

4.  A detail screen showing everything, save it to database so the Ad Hoc can be ran by others "if marked public" and they don't have to keep entering in this stuff, especially if its a report they run often.

A
Adam Cameron.
Inspiring
January 30, 2010

Right.

Is there a question to go along with all of that?

--

Adam

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