Report Structure

In a Web Intelligence document, the following items help identify the reports and report elements:

  • Id

    The unique identifier of a report or report element inside a document. It is an integer.

  • Reference

    The identifier of a report element with respect to the report it belongs to. It is a base64 string of the format "X.Y.A.[...]", where X is the report identifier, Y the report element identifier, and A the identifier of an instance of the report element. Instance identifiers are used to identify the same report element used several times in a report, for example a section in a report, or a cell in a table.

Where to Use References?

You use the reference of a report element to get:

Note You can use references or datapaths to retrieve the data associated with a specific instance of a report element.

Example

<report>
    <id>1</id>
    <name>Chart Demo</name>
    <reference>1.RS</reference>
    <showDataChanges>false</showDataChanges>
    ...

In the current document, the report identifier is "1" and the string "1.RS" is the reference of the report in the document.

<elements>
    <element type="Cell">
        <id>3</id>
        <reference>1.K.3</reference>
        ...
The report element identifier is "3". The string "1.K.3" represents the reference of the element in the report.

In addition, the report structure can be viewed as a tree, which means there is a parent/child relationship between reports and report elements. This mechanism allows to add an element in the report structure with accuracy.

Example

<elements>
    <element type="Cell"> 
        <id>14</id>  
        <reference>1.E</reference>  
        <name>Block 2</name>  
        <parentId>1</parentId>
        ... 

The report element of type "Cell" belongs to the report of which identifier is "1".