Deployment and the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE

In this section:

A WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE project can be deployed to a larger group of people for sharing results or allowing them to do their own analysis. There are several strategies for deploying results:

  1. You can export a static document containing charts from the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE. Types of documents include Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and ADOBE Portable Document Format (PDF).
  2. You can send your WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE Project to another user who has WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE. The user may have WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE or WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE Desktop Navigator, a read-only version of WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE. You can send a project with data embedded into it (as an ".advm" file) or that references a data source (a ".adv" file).
  3. You can publish your project to WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE, from where an interactive dashboard can be accessed by any user with a web browser, with no need to install desktop software. The WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE product is required for this capability.

An interactive analysis application in a web browser is often called a dashboard, and that term will be used here to describe a WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE project accessed from the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE.


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Dashboards

WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE Dashboards are multi-tab analytical applications built with charts. These are presented in a web using the Microsoft Silverlight plugin on PCs or using an application on Apple iPad tablets. All of the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE charts are available, and they provide most of the Visual Discovery capabilities that make the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE client application so useful. A project in a browser looks like this; charts are arranged on tabs, corresponding to the tabs in the original WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE project. Each tab has a tool bar providing access to WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE and data export functions. Charts also have context menus, identical to those in the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE client.

A dashboard supported by the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is accessed via the URL http://<YourServername>/adv, where YourServerName is your web server.

The operations supported by the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE dashboards are:

WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE provided by WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE dashboards is quite close to the capabilities of the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE, but there are differences imposed by the web environment:

Function

WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE

Visual Discovery Server AE Dashboard

Focus

Hover over item in chart

Hover over item in chart

Selection Operations

Replace (default), Toggle (with CTRL key depressed), Add, Subtract, and Intersect

Replace (default) and Toggle (with CTRL key depressed) only

Panning/Zooming

Using zoom bar, keyboard, and mouse

Using zoom bar only

Keyboard commands

As defined in Keyboard Commands.

Same set, but browser typically intercepts commands so they are not received

The WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE Portal

The WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE Portal is a web page provided by the URL http://<YourServername>/adv (where YourServername is the name of your server) that lists the projects available from that server. It gives details about the projects, and may be used to launch a project by clicking on the name, which is a link. Here is an example of a portal:

Fields in the table are:

Implementation Constraints

The WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE dashboards are supported in any browser that support Microsoft Silverlight on PCs and on Apple iPads via an application. Supported browsers on PCs include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on both Microsoft Windows and Apple OS/X. Apple Safari is NOT supported on Apple IOS devices, however: the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE must be accessed via an application. See the Implementation Guide (located in the installation directory for the client software and the bin subdirectory of the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE installation directory).



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Publishing to WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE

How to:

Deploying via the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE requires WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE for authoring and the separate WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE product as the server for other users. WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is a Microsoft .Net application which requires a server running Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) as the web server and Microsoft .Net as the software platform.

A project accessed via the web is often called a dashboard.

A dashboard supported by WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is accessed via the URL http://<YourServername/>adv, where YourServername is your web server.

Directory Structure

WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is installed typically on a separate server; by default it installs in c:\Program Files\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE. The subdirectories here are:

Publishing

Your project file (.adv or .advm) is the source for your dashboards. Tabs in your project become pages in your dashboard. These pages can be combined in various ways to create a number of dashboards, for example targeted to different Business Units or people with different roles. So a single project may be used to publish multiple dashboards by choosing which pages/tabs are included in each. Pages will appear in your dashboard in the same order that the tabs appear in your project.

Templates

A template is an HTML file that surrounds your dashboard. This HTML file lets you give your own look and feel to the dashboards that you publish. A template will be used if you check the Publish using server template check box on the Publish Dashboard wizard. During the publishing process, this will lead you to this wizard page which gives the list of templates available on your server; these are files stored in the Templates subdirectory in your server installation.

You must have previously placed these template files there!

The default template is available in the Templates subdirectory, and looks like this:

<html xmlns:v=urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml>
<head>
<link rel=stylesheet type=text/css href=../../ASIScripts/style2.css />
<link rel=stylesheet type=text/css href=../../ASIScripts/footerStyle.css />
<title></title>
<!-- BEGIN ASIPublishHead -->
<!-- END ASIPublishHead -->
</head>
<body>
<!-- BEGIN ASIPublishContent -->
<!-- END ASIPublishContent -->
</body>
</html>

The dashboard contents is substituted into this page at the BEGIN and END HTML comments.

You can modify the color of the tabs in the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE dashboard by modifying the style sheet style2.css and changing the template to access the modified style sheet, for example:

<link rel=stylesheet type+text/css href=../../ASIScripts/MyVersionOfStyle2.css/>

Implementation Constraints

WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is a Microsoft .Net application, and so requires a Microsoft Windows server, the Microsoft .Net platform, and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).

Performance Considerations

The Internet is optimized for short, stateless operations. WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE maintains a large amount of state for a session so that you can continually interact with your data. The WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE loads all of your data into the memory of the web server when you start a project. This memory must remain in memory until that session terminates.

For a large volume of data, the time to load it into memory can be substantial. This will be seen by the user as a delay when accessing the dashboard initially. The web server also imposes limit on how long a handler can take to respond to a web request. The initial data load time for large datasets may exceed this limit. In this case, increase the timeout so that the web server does not prematurely terminate the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE.

Tip: To increase the timeout for WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE, add a line to WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE\web.config, somewhere within the <system.web> node:

<httpRuntime executionTimeout=1200 maxRequestLength=4096 useFullyQualifiedRedirectUrl=false minFreeThreads=8 minLocalRequestFreeThreads=4 appRequestQueueLimit=100 /> 

This would change the data load timeout to 20 minutes instead of the default 30 seconds.

To try to minimize the memory impact from multiple sessions, WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE will share this loaded data between multiple web sessions that are accessing the same Data Source. Each session will have a small amount of memory to maintain its own state (for example coloring, selection, font selections, etc.), but the static loaded memory is saved. So even for a large volume of data, the first session will incur the cost of loading the data, but subsequent sessions will start very quickly as they find the data already loaded into memory.

Sessions remain in server memory until they are terminated by the web server. This happens by default after the session is inactive for 20 minutes; this timeout interval can be set via the web server. If multiple sessions share the same data, only the data specific to them is released when that session expires. The large bulk of data will not be released until the last session expires.



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Procedure: How to Publish a Dashboard
  1. Use the Publish Dashboard item in the Task View or the Files menu bar item. This launches the Publish Dashboard dialog.

  2. Server Address is the URL for your server;

    Note: This must include the adv subdirectory.

  3. In the Pages pane, check the pages from the project to include in the dashboard.
  4. Give the dashboard a name in Dashboard Name.
  5. Choose options:
    • Allow Project Export: check to allow the end user to download the project file to their PC for offline analysis. This feature requires the user to install WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE Desktop Navigator locally.
    • Allow Data Export: check to allow the end user to export data to their client machine.
    • Embed Data: Check if you want the current snapshot of your data embedded in the project, so that this will be shown to users of the dashboard. Otherwise, the data source will be accessed when the dashboard is accessed.
  6. Advanced Options: These options let you provide advanced features, but also require you to add files to your server installation supporting these actions.
    • Publish using server template: Check to then pick a custom template to publish into.
  7. Choose Next> to go to the next step in the wizard, which lets you choose the subfolder in the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE installation directory to publish into. You must previously create any subdirectories on the server for them to appear here.

  8. If security policies are defined, you will be prompted for possible use of a security policy with this dashboard; see Credential Based Filters for details:

  9. Click Finish to complete publishing.
  10. A dialog will appear giving the URL that the dashboard was published to. Use this URL to access the dashboard in the future.


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Data Sources

A Data Source is a definition of input data that will be used by the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE. It contains:

A single data source can define multiple tables. For example it could draw data from four worksheets in a spreadsheet, or from two queries against a database.

Data sources can be shared across projects. A project may have multiple data sources.

The collection of data from all data sources in a session is called the Data Pool.

Define Data Sources

You use the Data Wizard to load data into a project; this defines a Data Source. This Data Source may be remembered, which will make it available in subsequent sessions to new projects.

Tip: This option is checked by default; uncheck it if you don't plan to reuse this data source in other projects.

You can define a Data Source without reading data into your project using the Manage Data Sources dialog, available from the File menu item:

Click the New Data Source button to create a new Data Source; this will use the Data Wizard to define the Data Source, but it will not read the data source. After completing the Data Wizard, the new Data Source will appear in the list of Available Data Sources in the Manage Data Sources dialog.

You can later access a defined Data Source using the Load Previous Data Source ... menu item in the File menu (see above); this provides a dialog that may be used to select data sources. Check one or more data sources and click Open to read their data.

Modify Existing Data Sources

You can modify existing Data Sources via the Manage Data Sources menu item in the File menu bar item. You can modify a Data Source to change:

  1. The location of the data.
  2. The attributes of the Data Source, such as the fields included and their properties.

Select the Manage Data Sources menu item from Files, and use the Edit... button next to a Data Source, to modify it:

The data location may be modified on the Connection tab; this example shows how the connection may be changed for a text data source:

Attributes of the Data Source are changed with the Metadata tab:

You can:

Note:

After you have made changes, click the Refresh button (above) to reload the data, and click Test. This enables the Save and Save As buttons; choose Save to overwrite the existing Data Source, or Save As to create a new Data Source.

If you created a new Data Source via Save As, you can add it to the existing project using the Add To Project button on the Manage Data Sources dialog. If the modified Data Source should be used in place of the original Data Source, uncheck the old Data Source in the Project Data Sources list.

After these changes, save the project (using the Save Project menu item under Files in the menu bar), and choose Refresh Data to reload the data with the new Data Source definitions.

You cannot change where data is retrieved for a Data Source; for example you cannot change a text file Data Source to a database Data Source. Instead, define a new Data Source via the New Data Source button in the Manage Data Sources dialog.

You can share Data Sources via the Template Library; use this as a way of controlling Data Source definitions.

Common Tasks

Change Table or Field Names

Suppose you have a field called rev and you would like it to appear as Revenue in Charts. Steps to change rev to Revenue:

  1. Modify the Data Source:
    1. Go to Manage Data Sources in the Files menu item.
    2. Click Edit for that Data Source.
    3. Go to the Metadata tab in the Data Source Editor.
    4. Change the Display Name of field rev to Revenue.
    5. Press Save to update the Data Source.
  2. Save the project (Save menu item in Files menu).
  3. Refresh the data (Refresh menu item in Files menu).
  4. Re-attach any charts that used the field name rev to use the new field name Revenue.

Add or Remove Field Names

Suppose you have a field that you would like to remove from a Data Source or add to a Data Source:

  1. Modify the Data Source:
    1. Go to Manage Data Sources in the Files menu item.
    2. Click Edit for that Data Source.
    3. Go to the Metadata tab in the Data Source Editor.
    4. Change the Display Name of field rev to Revenue.
    5. Press Save to update the Data Source.
  2. Save the project (Save menu item in Files menu).
  3. Refresh the data (Refresh menu item in Files menu).

Add Fields to the Data Source

  1. Define a new Data Source:
    1. Go to Manage Data Sources in the Files menu item.
    2. Click New Data Source.
    3. Define the data source using the Data Source Wizard. This will not read in the data.
    4. Press Save to update the Data Source.
  2. Swap your old Data Source for your new Data Source.
    1. The new Data Source appears at the bottom of the list under Available Data Sources in the Manage Data Sources dialog.
    2. Click on the Data Source you just created and then click Add To Project.
    3. At the top under Data Source Name, uncheck the box for the current Data Source, then click OK.
  3. Save the project (Save menu item in Files menu).
  4. Refresh the data (Refresh menu item in Files menu).

Change the Location of a Data Source

What if the location of your Data Source changed? For example, you may have a new database server, or the spreadsheet you are using has moved. For the spreadsheet case:

  1. Modify the Data Source:
    1. Go to Manage Data Sources in the Files menu item.
    2. Click Edit for that Data Source.
    3. In the Connection tab in the Data Source Editor dialog, click Browse and find the new path.
    4. Press Save to update the Data Source.
  2. Save the project (Save menu item in Files menu).
  3. Refresh the data (Refresh menu item in Files menu).

Convert a Project with Embedded Data (.advm) to Point to Its Data Source

Suppose that you have a .advm file and you would like to replace the embedded data with a new version, from a .csv file.

  1. Open the project.
    1. Place the new .csv file into a folder of your choosing.
    2. Open the .advm file.
  2. Modify the Data Source:
    1. Go to Manage Data Sources in the Files menu item.
    2. Click Edit for that Data Source.
    3. In the Connection tab in the Data Source Editor dialog, click Browse and find the new path.
    4. Press Save to update the Data Source.
  3. Save the project as a .adv (Save menu item in Files menu).
  4. Refresh the data (Refresh menu item in Files menu).

Move a Dashboard from a Test to Production Environment

Suppose that you have a dashboard ready to be deployed to your production server; however it is currently using a local extract file:


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Security

Access to dashboards on the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE are managed through the security capabilities built into Microsoft IIS and ASP.Net. Options are:

  1. Anyone can access the dashboard if they know its URL using anonymous access. This is how the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is configured by default.
  2. Access to an entire dashboard can be managed. Authenticated Windows access requires that the Server and client be in the same Windows domain and that the user log into the domain. The user then must have access (on an individual or group basis) to the project files that he or she accesses.
  3. Access to a subset of the data in a project can be controlled; this is discussed under Credential Based Filtering.
  4. You can provide your own, custom authentication scheme to an entire dashboard.

Managing Access to Dashboards

The WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE is used to create and publish dashboards to the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE. When publishing, you are prompted for a destination for the dashboard.

Dashboards are placed under subfolders of the Projects folder of the ADV virtual directory on the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE machine. Thus, when prompted for a destination, you are shown all subfolders of the Projects folder on your server. By default, these are folders located under C:\Program Files\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE\Projects. A default installation of the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is created with one subfolder in this directory named Demo. You can create additional project folders by manually adding new folders under the Projects folder on your server machine.

We recommend you publish your dashboards into logical groupings (subfolders) that reflect role or intended access rights as much as possible. For example, suppose you have three marketing managers, each responsible for a specific region (East, Central and West), and a marketing VP that oversees the managers. In this case, a suggested folder structure is:

C:\Program Files\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE

WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE portal root directory

\Projects

Dashboard root folder

\Projects\AllRegions

All Regions dashboards

\Projects\Central

Central Region dashboards

\Projects\East

East Region dashboards

\Projects\West

West Region dashboards

Restricting Access with Windows Authentication

By default, the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is configured to allow anonymous access. You can restrict access to dashboards using Windows Authentication by taking the following steps. We will assume a folder structure like that noted in the previous section and make changes to restrict access to dashboards located under C:\Program Files\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE\Projects\Central to users who belong to a domain groups called CentralTeam.

  1. Go to C:\Program Files\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE and open the web.config file in a text editor.
  2. Change the line specifying authentication mode from this:

    <authentication mode=None />

    To this:

    <authentication mode=Windows />

  3. Save changes to web.config and close text editor.
  4. Create a new web.config file in the C:\Program Files\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE\Projects\Central folder, and add the following text to the file:
    <configuration>
      <system.web>
        <authorization>
          <allow roles=”DOMAIN\CentralTeam” />
          <deny users=* />
        </authorization>
      </system.web>
    </configuration>
  5. Save changes to new web.config file.

These steps will allow users of the CentralTeam group to view dashboards published to the Central folder, but deny access to all other users.

Here are some other configurations you can use in step 4 to restrict access:

Example 1

Use this configuration to allow access to members of the ExecutiveTeam and CentralTeam domain groups.

<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <authorization>
      <allow roles=”DOMAIN\ExecutiveTeam, DOMAIN\CentralTeam” />
      <deny users=* />
    </authorization>
  </system.web>
</configuration>

Example 2

Use this configuration to allow the domain users Joe and Sally access, in addition to members of the CentralTeam domain group.

<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <authorization>
      <allow users=”DOMAIN\Joe, DOMAIN\Sally” />
      <allow roles=” DOMAIN\CentralTeam”/>
      <deny users=* />
    </authorization>
  </system.web>
</configuration>

Example 3

Use this configuration to allow all users access.

<configuration>
  <system.web>     <authorization>
      <allow users=* />
    </authorization>
  </system.web> </configuration>

Access rights defined in a web.config file apply to all resources located in the folder, and to resources located in any subfolders unless overridden by a web.confilg file at the subfolder level. For example, the web.config file at the virtual directory root might specify that by default all authenticated users have access to all resources in the portal, but a separate web.config file located in a subfolder containing strategy reports might grant access rights only to upper management.

Restricting Access using Custom Authentication

Since the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE is an ASP.NET application, you can leverage the security capabilities built into the ASP.NET platform to build your own security mechanism and integrate it into a WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE installation. This allows you to integrate into an existing environment where access rights might be kept in a central repository as part of a single sign-on environment. In that case, you could provide the logic to check access rights (in addition to doing the authentication) and based on results relay to ASP.NET whether to display the requested page or deny access.

For details on using custom authentication, you can search the online Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/) on the phrase “Forms Authentication”, or various books covering ASP.NET 1.1 by publishers such as Microsoft Press, O’Reilly & Associates, or Wrox Press.



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Credential Based Filters

You can author dashboards that honor enterprise data security policies based on user credentials. This capability allows dashboard authors to author a single dashboard and publish it to a group of users who, when accessing that dashboard, will see only the data that they are authorized to see.

Access to the data within a project is controlled by a security strategy that must be defined and installed within the project directory area of the AE Server. A security strategy is a set of associations between users and data values, and whether those data values should be included or excluded from the display of data present to them when viewing a project. There may be one or more data strategies that are identified by name. When a project is published one of the configured data strategies may be selected to control access to the project data.

Data strategies are defined within files placed in the project directory of the AE Server. These files are named 'data security.config' and may be placed within project subdirectories or in the root project directory. A data security file placed within a subdirectory will be located and used for projects published to that subdirectory and a data security file located in the root project directory will be utilized for all other projects. This allows for security strategies based upon the directory that a project is published to with a default strategy located in the root directory. Note that all security strategies must have entries within the root project configuration file, if a strategy is defined within a subdirectory it may have an empty definition in the root. Without the definition in the root, the strategy will not be available for selection when publishing.

An empty data security file is installed in the project root directory and may be used as a starting point. The data security files are formatted XML files. An example of a set of security strategies might be:

<DataSecurityStrategies>
	<Strategy id=abc name=Sales Regions>
		<User name=YourDomainName\fflintstone>
			<ValueList filterType=include>
				<Value>West</Value>
				<Value>East</Value>
			</ValueList>
		</User>
		<User name=YourDomainName\wflintstone>
			<ValueList filterType=include>
				<Value>South</Value>
				<Value>West</Value>
			</ValueList>
		</User>
		<User name=anonymous>
			<ValueList filterType=exclude>
				<Value>West</Value>
			</ValueList>
		</User>
	</Strategy>
	
	<Strategy id=123 name=Historical Quarters>
		<User name=YourDomainName\brubble>
			<ValueList filterType=include>
				<Value>Q1</Value>
				<Value>Q2</Value>
			</ValueList>
		</User>
	</Strategy>
</DataSecurityStrategies>

This file defines two data strategies named 'Sales Regions' and 'Historical Quarters'. Within the 'Sales Region' strategy the user 'YourDomainName\fflintstone' will only see data that corresponding to rows having the values 'West' and 'East'. The user 'YourDomainName\wflintstone' will only see data values corresponding to rows having the values 'South' and 'West'. Any user that is not authenticated (the 'anonymous' User entry) will be excluded from seeing any data that corresponds to rows having a value of 'West'. The second security strategy is named 'Historical Quarters' and only specifies that the user 'YourDomainName\brubble' will see data values corresponding to rows having the values of 'Q1' and 'Q2'.

Specific notes about the fields within the data strategy:

The 'id' attribute of a Strategy must be unique among your strategies and should never be changed. This value is embedded within project files as they are published. If a strategy is further defined within a configuration file in a project subdirectory it must have the same identifier. The 'name' attribute of the strategy may be changed and is only used for display and selection of the available strategies when a project is published.

A User is specified with their full login domain and user name. The case of the entered values is ignored, but the formatting and spelling of the values must be exact. A user name of 'anonymous' may be used to match users that are not authenticated with the server.

Each user will have a ValueList that contains one or more Value elements that correspond to data values within a field in a project's data pool. These data values must be entered exactly as they exist within the data, case is observed to match values. This set of values will be included or excluded from the data within a project based on the filterType attribute setting of 'include' or 'exclude'. Any entry specified here that does not start with 'inc' will be considered to be an exclusion.

To exclude all data for a specific user create a ValueList with a filterType of 'include' without any Value elements.

If the 'anonymous' user entry is not present, access by non-authenticated users will be denied.

A single configuration file may contain multiple Strategy elements. A security Strategy may have multiple User elements, a ValueList may have multiple Value elements, but a User is only expected to have one ValueList.

Server Configuration

Before publishing dashboards to the server, you must make sure that the Server AE installation has been configured properly. This implementation relies upon Windows integrated security to identify users. You must modify the web.config file in the Server AE directory of your IIS installation to enable Windows integrated security to be utilized.

  1. Open up the IIS tree under Computer Management on your server. Browse to the ADV virtual directory and open up Properties. Under the Directory Security tab, make sure to check the box for “Windows integrated security”. This will set up IIS to pass Windows user credentials from the browser session to authenticate the users.
  2. Modify the web.config file in the Server AE installation directory. Under the <system.serviceModel> key, comment out the default anonymous bindings and select an appropriate security mode from the available choices that support Windows authentication.
  3. Copy the data security.config file that you created above to the Server AE Projects directory.
  4. The server is now configured for credential filtering.

Specifying Security when Publishing

When publishing a project to the server an additional dialog page is provided to configure data security for the project if there are data security strategies configured for the server. To enable data security, check the 'Enable Data Security' check box and provide values for the Table, Field, and Strategy names. The Table and Field values are used to identify the table and field within the data pool that must contain the values specified within a desired security strategy as explained above. The Strategy is the name of the desired security strategy that was created above. The Strategy names are collected from the data security configuration file that is installed in the root of the AE Server project directory.

Important: When selecting a data field for security insure that the selected field is not used in a text filter within the project. Only one text filter per data field is currently supported. A text filter accessible by the user would allow them to override the values specified by the security strategy. If it is desirable to have a text filter available to further exclude field items a second field should be create with a copy operation for the field specified to the security strategy. This copied field should then never be used in a text filter.


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Template Library

The Template Library stores information on the following Project items on a machine:

These items may be shared across all projects on your machine. You can share all items or individual items. You can maintain and post Template Libraries centrally.

A Template Library is accessed and maintained from the Tools menu with the Import Template Library ... and Export Template Library ... menu items:

These menu items invoke the Template Library Item Selection dialog, which is used to specify which items to export or import to or from a Template Library.


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Embedded Data in a Project

Create an Embedded Data Project Automatically

Adv2Advm Utility

The Adv2Advm utility performs this task. It is available in the installation directory for WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Workbench AE. This utility converts a .adv project file to a .advm profile file. It runs the .adv project file to extract the data from its Data Source, than saves the result to a .advm file.

You can use the Windows scheduler to run this utility at regular, specified intervals.

The process to use this utility is:

  1. Publish a project to the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE with the embedded data option checked. This places a .advm version of the project in the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE.
  2. Copy your .adv project to a spot on the WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Server AE; it does not have to be in the server installation directory.
  3. Use Windows Scheduler to schedule the Adv2Advm utility to convert this .adv project file to a .advm project at regular intervals.

Adv2Advm may be used to convert one file at a time using command line parameters, or a list of files may be passed to it in a list file.

The command line parameters are:

Command switches that specify files should be followed by a ':' and then the file name, and file names with embedded spaces should be quoted. Command switches may appear in any order on the command line. For example:

adv2advm -i:C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\My Project.adv -o:\C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\My Project.advm

This example will convert the My Project file into one with embedded data in the C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery AE Projects directory.

If multiple files are to be converted, a list file may be used to specify multiple projects. for example:

adv2advm -l:C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\Project List.xml

This will convert the list of projects in the Project List.xml file.

The format of the project list file is a simple xml structure containing the list of input and output file names. An example of the contents of a list file is:

<projectList>
	<project>
		<i>C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\eFashion Bars.adv</i>
		<o>C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\eFashion Bars.advm</o>
	</project>
	<project>
		<i>C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\eFashion Cities.adv</i>
		<o>C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\eFashion Cities.advm</o>
	</project>
	<project>
		<i>C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\eFashion Summary.adv</i>
		<o>C:\WebFOCUS Visual Discovery Projects\eFashion Summary.advm</o>
	</project>
</projectList>

Note: The projectList and project elements may be called anything, but each 'project' element must contain an 'i' and 'o' element containing the input and output file names for that project.

The processing of the Adv2Advm utility is logged through the standard logging mechanism used in the other desktop applications, as well as to the displayed user interface.


WebFOCUS