Release Notes for ReportServer 4.6.0

These release notes reflect the changes with respect to ReportServer RS4.5.0-6089.

• Some Important Features and Noteworthy Improvements
• SAP HANA support
• AWS Athena support
• YugabyteDB support
• CockroachDB support
• Exasol support
• Incorta support
• CrateDB support
• Derby support
• REST API
• Remote Servers
• Allow to copy remote RS entities to local RS installation
• Allow to render DOT files to SVG
• Allow to export dynamic list prefilter to DOT file
• Allow to replace user of all active scheduler jobs
• Allow to copy all parameter definitions of a report
• Allow to list, add and modify registry entries
• Allow to list, add and modify the properties mapping
• Extend "General Info" system console
• Allow to access datasources by key
• Display manual LDAP import results
• Allow executing HQL queries
• Customizing the Logout URL
• Add "Global search" button to admin panel
• New Features, Improvements and Bug Fixes for RS4.6.0-6090

Some Important Features and Noteworthy Improvements for ReportServer RS4.6.0

SAP HANA support

SAP HANA is a multi-model database that stores data in its memory instead of keeping it on a disk. The column-oriented in-memory database design allows you to run advanced analytics alongside high-speed transactions – in a single system. Why is this so important? Because it lets companies process massive amounts of data with near-zero latency, query data in an instant, and become truly data-driven. By storing data in column-based tables in main memory and bringing online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transactional processing (OLTP) together, SAP HANA is unique – and significantly faster than other database management systems (DBMS) on the market today.

ReportServer supports SAP HANA by its official JDBC driver ngdbc.jar, downloadable from SAP.

AWS Athena

Amazon AWS Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data directly in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) using standard SQL. With a few actions in the AWS Management Console, you can point Athena at your data stored in Amazon S3 and begin using standard SQL to run ad-hoc queries and get results in seconds.

ReportServer supports AWS Athena by its official Simba JDBC driver AthenaJDBC42-VERSION.jar, downloadable from AWS.

YugabyteDB support

YugabyteDB is a high-performance, cloud-native, distributed SQL database that aims to support all PostgreSQL features. It is best suited for cloud-native OLTP (i.e., real-time, business-critical) applications that need absolute data correctness and require at least one of the following: scalability, high tolerance to failures, or globally-distributed deployments.

ReportServer supports YugabyteDB by its official JDBC driver, downloadable from here.

CockroachDB support

CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database built on a transactional and strongly-consistent key-value store. It scales horizontally; survives disk, machine, rack, and even datacenter failures with minimal latency disruption and no manual intervention; supports strongly-consistent ACID transactions; and provides a familiar SQL API for structuring, manipulating, and querying data.

ReportServer supports CockroachDB by the Postgres driver shipped with ReportServer.

Exasol support

Exasol is a parallelized relational database management system (RDBMS) which runs on a cluster of standard computer hardware servers. Following the SPMD model, on each node the identical code is executed simultaneously. The data is stored in a column-oriented way and proprietary in-memory compression methods are used.

ReportServer supports Exasol by its official JDBC driver exasol-jdbc.jar

Incorta support

Incorta is an end-to-end data and analytics platform for acquiring, processing, analyzing and presenting business applications data.

ReportServer supports Incorta by the PostgreSQL driver shipped with ReportServer.

CrateDB support

CrateDB is a distributed SQL database management system that integrates a fully searchable document-oriented data store.

ReportServer supports CrateDB by its official JDBC driver, downloadable from here

Derby support

Apache Derby is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by the Apache Software Foundation that can be embedded in Java programs and used for online transaction processing.

ReportServer supports Apache Derby by its official JDBC driver derbyclient.jar, downloadable from here

REST API

ReportServer publishes several REST API endpoints automatically which can be used for accessing given REST services.

These include the following:

• test service: allows to test the REST API endpoint.
• general-info service: returns a JSON containing your system configuration.
• dot-renderer service: allows you to render a Graphviz DOT file into a SVG file which can be displayed directly by your web browser.
• node-exporter service: allows you to export any node to XML in an analogous way as the "export" functionality.

Details of specific usage can be found in the Administration Guide.

Remote Servers

ReportServer 4.6.0 introduces a new kind of node called "remote server". This is used to defined remote ReportServer servers, which can be then used to copy external data, e.g. reports or users from another ReportServer installation (e.g. PROD) into your local ReportServer installation (e.g. TEST) (refer to this for more information).

Currently, remote RS REST servers are supported, which use the ReportServer REST API.

The following screenshot shows an example remote RS REST server definition.

Allow to copy remote RS entities to local RS installation

By using the remote RS servers explained here, you can now copy entities from a remote RS server into a local RS installation, e.g. from PROD to TEST, using the "rpull copy" terminal command as shown in the following.

The screenshot below first checks if the copy can be done correctly, then it copies reports (including variants) from the remote PROD server, remote location /reportmanager/myreports to the local location /reportmanager/import:

Allow to render DOT files to SVG

Any DOT file can now be easily rendered into a SVG graph in ReportServer with help of the "dot-renderer" REST service as shown in the following screenshot. The DOT file in the example can be found here.

Allow to export dynamic list prefilter to DOT file

The dynamic list prefilter can now be exported as a DOT file, which can be visualized in any Graphviz tool, including ReportServer, as shown in the following screenshots:

Allow to replace user of all active scheduler jobs

You can now replace an old user with a new user in all owners, executors, scheduled-by and recipients of all active scheduler jobs with "scheduler replaceUser" terminal command as shown below.

Allow to copy all parameter definitions of a report

You can now use the "copy parameterDefinitions" terminal command for copying all parameter definitions of a report as shown in the screenshot below. The command copies all parameter definitions from an origin report to a target report. If the reports are variants, their parent base reports are used. Note that dependencies on other parameters are not copied, so these have to be copied manually.

Note that you can also copy parameter definitions with the "copy" and "paste" context menu items of the parameter management panel as shown below.

Allow to list, add and modify registry entries

The script registry can be modified via the new "registry" terminal commands as shown below.

The registry entries can be listed and completely cleared as shown below.

Individual entries can be removed as shown below.

To add or modify entries you can use the "registry put" terminal command as shown below.

Allow to list, add and modify the properties mapping

The properties mapping can be modified via the new "properties" terminal commands as shown below.

The properties entries can be listed and completely cleared as shown below.

Individual entries can be removed as shown below.

To add or modify entries you can use the "properties put" terminal command as shown below.

Extend "General Info" system console

The "General Info" system console was extended to include more system and usage properties as shown in the screenshot below.

Allow to access datasources by key

Analogously to reports, you can now set a unique key to your datasources and access them by key, e.g. by "net.datenwerke.rs.core.service.datasourcemanager.DatasourceService.getDatasourceByKey(String)".

The same applies to datasinks and remote servers.

Display manual LDAP import results

Executing a manual LDAP import now displays the specific import results as shown in the following screenshot. This allows easier problem debugging.

Allow executing HQL queries

You can now execute HQL (Hibernate Query Language) database queries and displays the results directly in ReportServer as shown in the following screenshot.

Customizing the Logout URL

By default, when a user logs out, the user will be taken back to the original ReportServer login page. In order to change this, you can change the config file located in etc/security/misc.cf within the ReportServer filesystem.

An example of this is shown below.

<logout>
     <url>http://your-reportserver/ReportServer/reportserver/fileServerAccess?path=/resources/public/login.html</url>
</logout>

The example above redirects the user to the given URL instead of the original ReportServer login page.

This is useful when customizing the login page, you can find more details on customizing the login page the Configuration Guide.

The default etc/security/misc.cf configuration file is shown below.

Add "Global search" button to admin panel

The global search can be now easily accessed via the new admin panel button as shown in the following screenshot.

New Features, Improvements and Bug Fixes for ReportServer RS4.6.0-6090