Active Technologies Report Overview

In this section:

An active report is a report that is designed for offline analysis. When using an active report, you can:

An active report for Adobe Flash Player includes most of the capabilities available in the HTML version of active reports in a visually enhanced, user-friendly report format. An active report delivered as a self-contained Adobe Flash SWF file that is Adobe Flash Player compatible allows for faster analysis of large data sets and interaction with the active report. For more information about active reports for Adobe Flash Player, see Active Technologies Report Integration With Adobe Flash Player.

When working with an active report, you can:

The following image shows an HTML active report. The pop-up menu is open for the Quantity column, with the Avg Calculate operator selected.


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Security Features

You can password protect an active report. This feature restricts users from viewing the report by requiring them to enter a password before opening the report. The data is encrypted using the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) specification. The password is used as the key for decrypting and encrypting the data. Therefore, the password is not stored in the report, and you do not need a connection to go back to the server for password verification.

The HTML page that you receive contains both the JavaScript and the data for the report so that you can interact with the data in a disconnected mode. Internet Explorer detects the JavaScript and issues a warning. If you look at the Internet Explorer warning, it mentions explicitly the detection of active content, which is the JavaScript. The same warning appears when pop-ups are blocked in the browser.


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Handling a Large Amount of Data

Because all post-retrieval processing is performed in the memory of the web browser, an active report has a processing limit of approximately 5,000 records or 100 pages of output. The active cache option enables you to send only the first page of active report output to the browser and retrieve subsequent pages from a temporary cache on the WebFOCUS Reporting Server. The server also becomes the resource for performing all calculations, sorting, and filtering when active cache is enabled. Since active cache uses on-demand paging functionality, WebFOCUS Viewer is not supported.

The active report with active cache option in the clustered server environment, using Cluster Manager (CLM), will maintain the connection with the WebFOCUS Reporting Server where the temporary cache is created in order to retrieve subsequent pages from the browser, while the report is in the same browser session.

The active cache feature uses a POST instead of a GET in an HTTP request. If your applications run active cache reports that use WebFOCUS Web Services, see the WebFOCUS Web Services manual for more information.


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