Active Reports

This section covers the following topics:

What is an Active Report?
Status of an Active Report
Availability of an Active Report
Attributes of an Active Report
Maintenance Functions for Active Reports
Browsing an Active Report with the Software AG Editor

What is an Active Report?

Entire Output Management creates active reports according to the corresponding report definition.

An active report is generated from the print data of the data source which satisfy the criteria specified in the Identification Attributes of the report definition.

An active report is the output that users receive. When an active report is created, it is sent automatically to the users specified in the Distribution Attributes of the report definition. It can also be sent to users manually at any time by any authorized user. Users receive an active report in their #Inbasket folder.

An active report can be printed on the logical printers which are specified in the Printing Attributes of the report definition.

See also General Information on Reports.

Status of an Active Report

The status of an active report may be one of the following:

Status Explanation
Browsable The active report has not yet reached its expiration date. It can be viewed online, but has not yet been archived.
To be archived The active report has passed its expiration date, but it has not yet been processed by the next run of the archive job. It can still be viewed online until the archive job has processed it.

Remember that an active report whose expiration date has passed will not be archived, as long as it is still in the printout queue waiting to be printed or in an open active bundle which is still open.

Browsable/Archived The report has not yet reached its expiration date, it can be viewed online, and it has already been copied to an archive (so that it is not lost when the spool queue is deleted).
Archived The active report has passed its expiration date. It cannot be viewed online. The only copy of it is in the archive.
Revived The active report has passed its expiration date, was archived and has subsequently been revived from the archive so that it is again available for online viewing until its revive expiration date passes.

Availability of an Active Report

The availability of an active report is controlled by the following general attributes of the underlying report definition:

Attribute Explanation
Archive directly

This attribute determines whether or not an archive copy of the active report is to be taken immediately. Possible values are:

  • Y = As soon as the active report is created it is marked as "to be archived". The next time the archive job runs, the active report will be archived and will no longer be viewable online. If "Y" is specified, the report retention information is ignored.

  • I = As soon as the active report is created it is marked as "to be archived and retained online". The next time the archive job runs, the active report is archived, but it is also retained for online viewing until the expiration of the report retention period.

  • N = The active report is created and is viewable online until the expiration of its report retention.

Retention - Report This attribute determines how long the active report is available online for viewing and printing.

In addition, you select the action to be performed when this period expires: either archive the active report or delete it. (This action specification is ignored if you set Archive directly to "Y" or "I".)

Alternatively, you can specify the number of generations, that is, the number of instances of the same active report.

Retention - Archive This attribute determines how long the active report is kept in the archive.

When this period expires, the active report is deleted from the archive and cannot be recovered.

Retention - Revive This attribute determines how long the active report - after it has been revived - is available online again for viewing and printing.

When this period expires, the revived copy is deleted again, and only the archived copy remains (until the archive retention period expires).

The attributes are described in detail under Attributes of a Report.

Example of report retention:

Let us assume that a report is defined with a report retention period of 5 absolute days.

If an active report is created on 18th January, its expiration date will be 23rd January.

This means that Entire Output Management will mark the active report as "to be archived" on 24th January. The next time the archive job runs, the active report will be copied to an archive file.

If anyone needs to view the report after that, it has to be revived.

Attributes of an Active Report

An active report can have the following attributes:

General Attributes

Field Explanation
Report The report name.
Run number Unique internal identifier for active report.
Description A short description for the report.
Location The current storage location for the active report. As described for column heading L.
Keywords Enter up to 3 keywords which will later help you select reports.
Master owner

The user specified here is the only one who can delete the active report; see Deleting an Active Report.

The monitor also takes this user ID to submit print jobs for reports to be scheduled for automatic printing.

This field is initialized with the Master owner ID of the underlying report definition.

You can specify a different user ID.

Retention You can modify the four Retention fields. For an explanation, see the field descriptions under Retention/Report.
Contents

Lines/Kbytes

The number of lines contained in the active report. For a binary report, its size in KB (as indicated by a "K" after the number).
CC Type Either ASA or MACHINE.
Record length The maximum number of bytes in the record.
Expiration date The active report is available online until the date you specify here.

Archive Attributes

Field Explanation
Retention

This is the length of time the active report is to be kept in the archive. When this period expires, the active report is deleted from the archive data set. An active report can be archived no matter where it is stored.

You can modify the Number and Unit fields, if the active report has not already been archived. For an explanation, see the field descriptions under Retention/Archive.

Archive (display only) Date/Time The date and time the active report was archived.
Expiration Expiration date. The active report is retained in the archive until this date.
Expiration Orig. The original expiration date. If the expiration date has been modified, the original date is displayed here.
Type If the archive is user-defined, the type number is shown here.
Data set The name of the data set where the active report was archived.
Volser(s) The VOLSER of the archive containing the active report.

Revive Attributes

Field Explanation

Retention

This is the length of time a revived active report is to be available online for browsing and printing. When this period expires, this "copy" of the archived report is deleted automatically.

You can modify the Number, Unit and Calendar fields, if the active report has not already been revived. If the active report has been revived, you can modify the Expiration field below. For an explanation, see the field descriptions under Retention/Report.

Revive

Date/Time The date and time the active report was revived.
Expiration The revived "copy" of the active report is available until this date. You can modify this field if the active report has already been revived. If the active report has not been revived, you can modify the Archive Attribute fields Number, Unit and Calendar.