MODERN ENTERPRISEREPORT MANAGEMENTWITH THE TELERIKREPORT SERVER
by Richard Zaslaw, Senior Sales EngineerBusiness Intelligence (BI) is integral to successfully managing the modernEnterprise. It provides an in-depth understanding of the state of the businessby enabling you to view and monitor key indicators. It can also be used toforecast significant events that may impact business, or to crystalize businesstrends for informed decision making. Those informed decisions are essential toimplementing strategies to adapt quickly to a changing environment.
Traditional reporting solutions differ from BI platforms because most are geared
toward exporting and printing static reports based on historical data that
captures what has occurred. By contrast, BI platforms focus on allowing users tointeract with live data, slicing, dicing and massaging the data for their own uniquepurposes, such as discovering the why behind the data.
However, despite the benefits, a full-featured BI platform can be extremely costly
and complex to integrate, requiring extensive hardware and IT resources to setup and maintain, as well as a steep learning curve for administrators and endusers. A more economical alternative is using a Line of Business (LOB) reporting
solution, which integrates more easily into existing applications and processes.
Many of these offer comparable capabilities, such as secure access to data andthe ability to manipulate it using an intuitive ad-hoc report designer. This enables
you to create user-defined reports which you can view locally and store securely
for reuse, or export and share in an automated fashion. Ad hoc reporting reaches
beyond the static pre-defined data snapshots that traditional canned reporting
provides, enabling an interactive end-user experience.

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2Here are key requirements to consider when evaluating a reporting framework:• Simplifies installation and configuration to maximize in-house IT resources• Enables ad-hoc report creation and deployment with minimal training• Provides reports in commonly requested formats such as Excel, PDF and Word
• Enables flexible and secure integration with Enterprise data
• Enables secure authentication of users, including integration with existing federated
services• Provides finely tuned, role-based access to features and functions of the reporting
process• Achieves optimal performance with minimal server resource requirements• Seamlessly integrates reports as part of Line of Business (LOB) desktop/web apps
• Enables responsive report viewing to support access from varied desktop, tablet andphone screen sizes• Delivers subscription-based, scheduled reporting to a targeted audience• Automatically updates reports when critical underlying data changes are detected• Scales easily to meet business demands

Telerik Report Server:
Designed for the Enterprise
The Telerik® Report Server by Progress is designed from the ground up to meet the needsof the Enterprise and to satisfy all of these key requirements. It is a true Line of Business(LOB) Reporting Solution, with a minimal footprint and full set of features and functionality. It
also enables easy configuration and provides an economical licensing model.

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3Report Server is a lightweight, server-based, Windows web apps delivered onpremises or in the cloud. It provides comprehensive reports management, including
well-organized, centralized report storage, previewing and scheduling services, alllocked down with extensive user management features.
Report Server is easily installed using a Windows MSI installer that automaticallycreates a separate website with its own application pool, running under theLocalSystem identity in Internet Information Services (IIS 7+). This server must have.NET 4.5.1 or newer installed. Report Server simply runs on an open, configurable
HTTP port, such as 80 or 83. At the initial startup, you just designate a Server

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4Administrator and configure report server storage as local file system, SQL Serveror Redis. You can specify an existing SMTP Mail Server, and take advantage ofbuilt-in customizable mail templates. These features enable you to configure thescheduling and data alert service that send reports and updates.

User Authenticationand Management

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5The user authentication schema for the Report Server is flexible. By default,
it’s configured to use standard, forms-based authentication and local accounts.
Alternatively, an enterprise administrator can configure authentication using the Web
Services Federation (WS-Federation) specification and integrate Active Directory for
Windows Domain or Azure AD. In addition, a Guest user account is available. This is a
special built-in user created upon initial setup. The Guest account is used for read-onlyconnections to Report Server, using the reports API or by sharing a link to a report.
This enables reports to be served as part of an external desktop, web or mobile app.
An extensive user management feature set enables granular control over directaccess to Report Server tabs/views and configurable features, as well as access toreport categories and individual reports. Designated server administrators can easily
add or remove users, and manage roles and permissions. Four built-in user roles—
System Administrator, Data Administrator, Report Creator and Report Reader—arefully editable. You can create custom roles and delete almost all existing roles.
You can also grant permissions as part of an assigned role or assign individual
permissions or customize permissions. Permission consists of three key aspects: 1)
Access—Read, Modify, Delete, or Create; 2) Scope—what features can be accessed(all reports, reports in a specific category; or single report) and 3) Target–based onscope (the report that is the target of single report scope).

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6Flexible Report Creation
Report Server enables you to create/add new, view/edit and version existing reports
in a user-friendly way. With its integrated desktop-based Report Designer, it’s perfectfor authoring and deploying professionally styled reports for all business needs. You
can design, preview locally and publish feature-rich, interactive crosstab, dashboard
and sales reports, invoices, product tags and catalogs, as well as free-form, ad-hoc
reports, to a designated server. Report definitions are created in a proprietary XML
format (.trdx) or with applied zip compression (.trdp). Reports can include rich datavisualization, such as charts, maps and choropleths.
You can also take advantage of rich, CSS-like styling options, Excel-like conditional
formatting, and drill-down and drill-through implementations. The design surface,with its drag and drop capability for adding report items, integrated rulers andsnap-to-position grid feature, is highly configurable to ensure pixel-perfect report
rendering in nine viewer-supported export formats (Excel, PDF, Word and more), as
well as local report printing through the browser’s PDF plugin.

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7Report Server offers extensive support for binding reports to a wide variety ofenterprise data sources: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, OLE DB or ODBC
databases, inline CSV, ADO.NET and OLAP cubes using Microsoft Analysis
Services. Simply define a new data connection with a unique name, description,
data provider and connection string. Access to read/write/modify connection
strings require granted permissions to the Data Connections View of the ReportServer. You can grant required permissions by assigning the user to a role
exposing this functionality, or by providing customized individual permissions.
You can also create and store reports in the server to take advantage of named
data sources and accomplish binding.

Telerik Reporting
EngineTelerik Report Server leverages the built-in Telerik Reporting Engine to generatereports. This intelligent Telerik OLAP data engine utilizes server resources toprocess the report data. It then renders the report in the client. This results in
optimized CPU loads and a decreased memory footprint on the server, with nearinstant data access on the client. Report Server also features a built-in caching
functionality to ensure optimal performance, memory consumption and fast
rendering in the case of multiple requests for the same report requested with thesame parameters and export format. It fulfills subsequent requests for the reportusing a cached version held in cache storage.
The Report Server enables timely access to key reports using three different
approaches:
1. Direct report viewing by licensed, authenticated users logged in to theReport Server web application
2. Scheduled delivery of a report sent in a requested export format as an email
attachment to a list of subscribers on a one-time or recurring basis
3. External report viewing from within an LOB desktop or web application
using embedded Report Viewers (may require additional Telerik Reporting
developer licensing)

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8Enterprise users granted Report Server Client Access License (CAL) and assigned
proper permissions to log into the Report Server web application interface canaccess a category and the report(s) stored within by clicking on the report to execute
it. They can then view it in the browser using the integrated HTML5 Report Viewer.
With an elevated “Report Creator” role, they have the option to pull the report down
to the desktop using the integrated Report Designer, and customize the reporttemplate’s layout. Then, they can preview the modified version locally in the designer,and push it back up to the server as a revision to share with others.

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9Administrators with proper permissions to access and work with the Scheduling view ofthe server can create a new task for a stored report. This tab provides wizards to facilitatecreating, modifying and deleting scheduled tasks. A scheduled task specifies when aspecific report should be rendered and in what document format (Excel, PDF or Word).
The generated documents are stored in Report Server and subsequently sent as email
attachments to a list of subscribers. You can run scheduled tasks once or on a recurrent
basis—daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. The recurrence rule enables you to set intervals
and range for how often a report is executed. In addition, the Activity view area of theScheduling tab provides details and a link to the document that’s created, which you canthen download to preview or delete. It also displays insights on the success of the task
and/or any associated errors.

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Controlled Accessto Reports
Report Server can also act as a repository to provide controlled, universal
access to reports by integrating with a collection of platform-specific,embeddable Report Viewers (ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.
NET Core, HTML5, Windows Forms and WPF). This enables reportviewing, exporting or printing from within existing Enterprise LOB desktop
applications, as well as intranet and Internet web applications. The majorityof the Report Viewers support themes and skinning to better integratewith the styling of these applications. You can employ predefined themes
or create new ones. Report Viewer APIs are exposed, so you can createcustomized toolbars, if required.
There is a configurable “Guest User” account which can be used to provide
free, external report viewing by means of a read-only connection to ReportServer, either using the REST API or by sharing a link to a specific report.
Guests can also use this account to access reports from the embedded
Report Viewer controls. In addition, you can configure Report Viewer to log
a desktop or web application user into Report Server automatically. Each
person using the external application can be mapped to a correspondinguser in Report Server with appropriate permissions for accessing specificreports. The authorized user can then act as the guest user by providing
credentials when rendering the page or displaying the form/window withthe embedded Report Viewer. This authentication mechanism helps limit
external access to reports.

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Ideal for BYOD
Environments

Rules define conditions that trigger the alerts. Whenyou select a data item embedded within a table orcrosstab in the report, conditional rules handle theway in which the specific value is compared against
the metrics you specify. Supported comparisons
include “is,” “is not,” “is greater than,” “is greater thanor equal to,” “is less than,” “is less than or equal to,”“in,” “like” and “not like.” If the rule’s data conditions
are satisfied, Report Server generates a fresh report
document in a predefined rendering option (Excel,PDF, Word, etc.) and sends it to the alert’s subscribers
as an email attachment.

Report Server provides a perfect solution for serving
reports in the corporate BYOD world. You can access
reports conveniently from a web browser running ona desktop, tablet or phone using the HTML5 Report
Viewer. The Viewer features touch support andresponsive design; it takes into account the screen
width of the viewing device and automatically adjusts
the layout of its toolbar, parameters area visibility andinteractive features to mobile mode for smaller screens.
The horizontal toolbar converts to a drawer widgetthat slides in from top-left. You can hide or expose theparameters area as needed to maximize the reportviewing area. All of this, combined with the Viewer’s
internal content scaling ability, minimize scrolling.

A data alert implements a recurrence rule thatspecifies whether it runs once or on a recurrent basis(daily, weekly, monthly or yearly). You can define andformat for the email template that accompanies thereport as desired.

Another key feature is “smart delivery,” whichenables timely email-based updates for managers
and decision makers when critical underlying datachanges occur in the reports to which they aresubscribed. A data alert runs at scheduled intervals,
checking that specific data conditions are satisfied.

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12API Ready

Report Server Application Programming Interface (API) is exposed, enabling you touse its functionality from within your own applications. The API is implemented asa RESTful Web API service through which the server can be managed using simple
HTTP requests. The API allows you to control (Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD))
Report Server resources, such as Reports, Categories and Data Connections fromwithin the client application, as well as to schedule tasks and data alerts. You can alsochange the Report Server settings remotely through the dedicated API.

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Conclusion
With all of its built-in features, Report Server is truly a comprehensive Line ofBusiness (LOB) reporting solution that can meet the vast majority of a modern
enterprise’s BI needs, while minimizing integration requirements and protecting
the bottom line. It provides a full framework for enabling enterprise developers
and/or business users to create, publish, version and manage access to featurerich, fully formatted interactive reports for a targeted audience, in a wide varietyof requested formats.
The extensive and highly configurable security features control server
authentication and provide fine-tuned role-based permissions to limit access tofeatures in Report Server such as data source implementation, report creationand sharing. The intuitive integrated Report Designer enables richly styled,template-based and ad-hoc report creation, editing and publishing. Finally,
Report scheduling and smart data alerts enable immediate and timely access toreports that can help to crystalize data insights to facilitate informed decisionmaking and help enterprises implement strategies to ensure success.
A customer-centric, vibrant roadmap will continue to deliver highly-requested,
enterprise features that enable Report Server to meet changing demands of themodern enterprise.

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Progress, 14 Oak Park, Bedford, MA 01730 USA Tel: +1 781 280-4000 Fax: +1 781 280-4095
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About Progress
Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) is a global leader in application development, empowering the digital transformation organizations
need to create and sustain engaging user experiences in today’s evolving marketplace. With offerings spanning web, mobileand data for on-premise and cloud environments, Progress powers startups and industry titans worldwide, promoting successone customer at a time. Learn about Progress at www.progress.com or 1-781-280-4000.

Progress and Report Server are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in
the U.S. and/or other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
© 2017 Progress Software Corporation and/or its subsidiaries or affiliates. All rights reserved.

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