Whether you need to document or present information about your objects, you can use predefined or custom reports to do so. Reports provide a way for you to view and share information derived from the objects you have created.

You can schedule, generate, update, list, and delete reports in CentraSite in the following ways:

Report template contains instructions for gathering metadata from CentraSite Registry Repository for one or more objects, and formatting it into an object-specific report. A report template could either be used as a stand-alone or associated with one or more CentraSite objects.

CentraSite is shipped with a set of predefined report templates that provide frequently used information about assets, API invocations, and events.

Some templates designed for API usage reporting can be saved, reused, and shared with other users. You can use these templates to monitor and track API specific usage information and consumer specific usage information of APIs. You can share these dynamic, read-only reports with API Portal users without giving them access to your data. API Portal users will see the latest version of report using the shareable link. You execute the command, share Report, to share a report with a registered API Portal instance. You can stop sharing the report at any time. To stop sharing the report, you must modify the property line com.centrasite.report.Classifications, and remove the value shared in the customization file, centrasite.xml. After you make changes to the report configuration, you must execute the command update Report.

CentraSite reports mainly use CentraSite Registry Repository as data source. In addition to using CentraSite as data source, CentraSite supports the relational database management systems, such as, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and Sybase. The reporting framework has extended support that enables some templates to communicate with these SQL databases using the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), and report data. The JDBC-compliant report templates are designed to access and retrieve data from the JDBC-compliant databases. For more information about JDBC-compliant report templates, see Configuring JDBC Support for BIRT Reports.

In addition to using the predefined report templates, you can create and design your own custom report templates to generate reports that will contain a specific content and format. Such reports can be created, for example, using the Eclipse plug-ins delivered with CentraSite. The BIRT Report Designer creates a .rptdesign file, referred to as the Template File, and describes a predefined rptdesign layout for creating the custom report templates. Documentation describing how to create BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) reports is contained in the Eclipse online help that is delivered with the plug-ins. For general information about the BIRT technology, see the description of the BIRT project in the Projects section of the Eclipse site at http://www.eclipse.org/birt/.