New Report Design - 2009

Introduction

The components/modules that are using Report engine are: Dashboard, Monitor, Tabulation Script, Report Viewer, Diagram Viewer. These modules send request of generation to report engine including:

• A data cache which contains all source data
• Stylesheets (including external and inline stylesheet) to apply
• Kind of presentation that the report should be exported as (pdf, excel, ppt, word, html, image)
• Other kinds of settings

The report engine takes the request, make calculation using the Interpreter, and then export the result into desired format.

A report consists of elements like: diagrams, images, text blocks, pages, paragraphs. The most important element is Diagram, which can be discriminated based on:

• Data
  • Cross Diagram
  • Standard Diagram
  • Tracking Diagram
  • Campaign Diagram

• Presentation type
  • Table chart
  • Image chart which include many kinds of chart like: pie, bar, line, funnel, area, radar etc.

Why a new system?

Current system drawbacks

• Heavy XML processing
• Heavy code duplication
• Inconsistent generation process

Thus it makes the cost of fixing bugs and maintain the old system greater than the cost of making an new system.

New system goals

• Remove the drawbacks of current system
• Side by side working with the old system
• Fully unit testing
• Unit/Integration tests can be run automatically
• Testing API must be simple enough for testers to join writing test cases
• Report API must be keep as simplest as possible
• Design documents must be officially registered on wiki page

Approach to new system

Steps are defined for approaching the new system, which are described below:

• Take the smallest possible case for prototyping (CrossDiagram with one axis for both row and column)
• Design the core functions to server the single case with full testing
• Approach in depth to:
  • Tabulation Script
  • Diagram Viewer
  • StyleSheet
  • Different presentation types
• Move on with Report and Report Viewer
• Move on with Monitor
• Move on with Dashboard
• Move on with data calculation optimization
• Performance refining => change design and test cases
• Full implementation for:
  • Cross Diagram
  • Other diagrams
  • All presentation types
• Replace the old system's gui components

Design details

• Report unit testing system
• Diagram generation process
• DiagramInfo
• Tabulation Script
• Tabulation Script for setting inline style to Table Chart
• Diagram viewer control
• Cross diagram settings control
• Report viewer control
• Integrating with Dashboard
• Integrating with Monitor
• Generic object visitor pattern
• Generic XML de-/serialization
• DiagramInfo de-/serialization
• Table chart builder
• Integrating Ajax.Pro and MS AJAX.NET Json Serialization

Lesson learn

This section lists all the:

• Mistakes
• Useful knowledge

that we have encountered during implementation.

• Code that MUST be improved

Current implementation status

Task	Current status	Planned actions
Implementation	Generation process Data generation is well defined and tested Image charts Bar/Line/Pie/Radar charts have been implemented for single case of CrossDiagram All stylesheet and dom operations are split into different files to ease the maintenance, however the files are still messy and need cleanup Table charts Table adaptors have been defined and tested Prototype for splitting huge table into sub-tables has been done Full support for HTML Acceptable support for PDF Stylesheet The stylesheet is kept as is intentionally to isolate to keep changing as the minimal level Tabulation Script The main script library has been moved to CatGlobe.Report assembly The code is hacked (with minimum impact) to allow plugging of new report's script library Diagram can be created using script Web controls DiagramViewer control has been created DiagramSettings control has been created also, however this need more time to implement custom business and testing	Generation process Apply data generation for the full CrossDiagram Apply data generation for other Diagrams Optimize values calculation Save calculation result to XML Image charts Full testing (manual) is required after DiagramViewer page have finished Table charts Apply external stylesheet Apply the table splitting code Support for PPT/Exel Stylesheet Redefine the hierarchy of stylesheet classes Tabulation Script Move all implementations to new assembly Web controls Make sure DiagramViewer works on FF Create client side event handler class to reuse the business Implement ReportViewer control and page Apply DiagramViewer to Dashboard and Monitor Apply ReportViewer to TabulationScript result viewer page
Intergration	Code has been committed Side-by-side Nevron's assemblies deployment is fine However, the project files (to actually build the new code into trunk) are not yet committed DiagramViewer page has been created	Commit everything after version 5.8 has been released Finish DiagramViewer page => replace the current page Start the ReportViewer page Start integrating to Monitor Start integrating to Dashboard Start integrating to Tabulation Script
Optimization		Unit/Integration tests code coverage must be checked => acceptable ratio is 85% Code profiling must be done => minor change in design Performance counter must be implemented Generation time must less than current system
Testing	Test data generation API is completed Testers have created most of the current test cases	Configuration settings for hard-coded values Check code coverage => define more test cases Ppt/Excel assertion Integrate CatGlobe.Report.Test project back to DomainTester project Testing of controls and javascript code

Document revisions

Version No.	Date	Changed By	Description	Svn revision
0.1	27.04.2009	Nguyen Trung Chinh	Create the first version for working with a single case of CDG	NA
0.1	20.07.2009	Nguyen Trung Chinh	Refine the document	NA
0.2	30.07.2009	Nguyen Trung Chinh	Finish version 0.2	54885