PEGASUS
output formatting
Reporting environment
The source data of the reporting environment can consist of any type of data (i.e. financial, demographic, etc…) and be stored in any type of container (i.e. Analysis Services Cubes, databases, text files, Excel® files, etc…). The source data is retrieved from a single or a combination of data source containers and exported into Excel® workbooks. These Excel® workbooks will contain the source data but will not have (data) links to the source data, therefore these Excel® workbooks (and its report data) can be stored (i.e. local network drives) and distributed (i.e. corporate email) independently of these data source containers.
Reporting
(Note that in this example the SQL Server 2014 Analysis Services Cubes “Adventure Works Tutorial” is used as source data).
In this example output tab a table is being created, 6 charts (2 types) and a textbox. Conditional formatting is used in the table to grey the font where the adjacent upper cell contains the same value. Every individual cell within any range of the output can have its own specific formatting, this entails font formatting, cell interior formatting, conditional formatting and number formatting.
Several other formatting options are also available for the advanced-user to implement when defining the output report settings: group by (sum, variant, maximum, minimum, etc…), sorting, column width, row height, merging cells, horizontal alignment, vertical alignment, auto filter, etc… Also the charts are formatted, sized and aligned according to the advanced-user’s specifications set in the reporting template files.
The table is based on Analysis Services Cube data and retrieved via multidimensional expressions (mdx), a query language for OLAP databases. The information (including the cube connection information) of these mdx queries is available to the end-user and the recipients of the output report through commentary added in specified cells. These commentaries can been seen when the mouse pointer is being hovered above the individual cells.
Analyses
Because all meta-data (connection information, mdx query, start-time, end-time, etc…) is stored in the output report, this can be used for audit purposes and for end-user reporting analyses. The ATLAS GUI enables the end-user to easily obtain the meta-data that then can be used to investigate data stored in the source data containers for specific detailed information.
In the Analysing mode the “pegasus mdx” tab is available to the end-user. In the “open workbooks” listbox the output report is selected and all mdx based tables are being listed in the “mdx tables” listbox.