How To Generate Reports based on textfile logs with MonitorWare Console Manually (For Windows Reporting Module - applicable for 3.1)

Article created 2006-11-29 by Florian Riedl.

What do we need?

1. You would need a Base Product Key and a Windows Reporting Module Key for this scenario. Further you would need some text file logs with xml format.

2. Once MonitorWare Console 3.1 is opened, on the left hand side, you can see a tree view with a node called "Reports". Click on that node. It will show you the list of available reports under it as well as on the right hand side. You will see something similar to the following figure:

Figure 1: Overview of Report Manager

You can now click on any of the displayed reports. For the purpose of this article, I have selected the "Needle in the Haystack Report". Once you click on the Needle in the Haystack Report, you will see something similar to the figure shown below.

Note: Windows Reports are displayed in a band of Lilac whereas the Pix Reports are displayed in a band of Blue.

3. Double-Click on the Needle in the Haystack Report and the following form will be displayed:

Figure 2: General Settings of the Report

4. This form displays the report options. If you double clicked on any "Report", then in that case, this form will opened up with the default settings.

Here you can choose between HTML based Reports or the new Crystal Report Module as basic output format.

The HTML Report Format was already used in previous versions of MonitorWare Console. It creates a HTML based report with all the info that is extracted from your log files or log database according to the filters you set. This old-fashioned method is still well suited to create reports which are viewable on nearly any basic setup of actual operating systems by default.

The Crystal Reports give your reports some new paint. The Crystal Reports engine is capable of creating Reports in different formats. Now it's up to you which you like. You can either choose HTML reports for embedding in your intranet website, PDF for e-mail attachments or excel sheets. Simply choose the format you require. The options given are quite self-explanatory.

For now just leave it as it is, you can try out the various possibilities later on.

5. The next step you have to take is setting up your Data Sources. Click on the Data Sources Tab and you should see the following form:

Figure 3: Create and select a Data Source

Here you can configure your data sources which you want to use for your report(s). These data sources are necessary for creating reports, because they contain the information you want to analyze. Therefore you need for every report at least one data source. This doesn't mean that you need to have a text file log (or a database) for every single report, but that you need at least one data source configured for creating those reports. You can use a data source for multiple reports or use multiple data sources for one report. You can even configure multiple data sources from the same database (e.g. configured to read out a different Table) in order to have only one database to manage.

A click on the New button will open the Data Source Setup Wizard. Here you can add and choose from different kind of database structures like simple text file logs, access database or MS SQL and MySQL databases.

Figure 4: Data Source Wizard startup screen

Figure 5: name and type of data source

In this screen of the wizard you can choose a screen name for your data source. Keep in mind that it is always useful to choose meaningful names so that you don't get confused if you have to change some options later and need to edit the settings for a specific database. Second option you can configure here is what kind of data source you want to use. You can choose between text files, MS SQL, MYSQL and Access databases. Choose a textfile as source and hit Next. You will be forwarded to a screen like in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Log file path

If you chose a textfile as data source you will encounter this screen (Figure 6). Here you have to insert the correct path and name of the log file. You can use wildcards to use multiple log files with different timestamps, too.

Figure 7: Choosing the data format to use

In Figure 7 you can now see a list of different data source format. Choose the one corresponding to the device that created the logs you want to make a report of. In this case for example choose Windows Reports (text file xml format). Of course you "could" use multiple format setups all at once, but this is not recommended due to performance issues appearing when doing that. Keep in mind that db stands for database and text file represents logs in a text file.

Figure 8: summary of the setup

Before finishing the setup you get a summary of the setup you made. Here you get once more all the information about the configuration you just created. You should check it before finishing the setup. If you found an option set false you can use the "back" button to go back and correct this. Keep in mind that you can do the settings once more by pressing the edit button.

Figure 9: Finishing the setup

Here you get a final result of your data source setup. Check the results if everything went OK and then just click finish. Now you have created your first Data Source. You can choose it now from the data sources dropdown menu and include it in your custom report preferences.

Now we still need to add our recently configured Data Source to out report. Click the Add button to add the selected data source form the "Available data source(s)" box to the "Data source(s) in use" box. This function is for specifying which data source(s) are used for this custom report. It's up to you if you want a single source to be included in the report or if you want multiple sources to be included. But it should look like that:

Figure 10: Added Data Source

You can now see the data sources used for this report displayed in the lower box.

With clicking on the Filters Tab, you are directed to the filter setup. You can choose from a whole bunch of filters. But I will skip that, because right now we do not need any specific filter settings. If you are interested anyway, feel free to follow this Link in order to receive information about setting up filters.

Now we have to save the report. Hit the Save buttons and the following form shows up. Here you can specify a name for the report and additionally you can enter some descriptions which make it easier to know what the specifications for this report are. This is very useful if you are generating lots of reports at a time.

Figure 11: Save Form

After you did that, click on Generate Report. This is the final step. If everything was set up correctly, then you should receive a fine report. Feel free to "play" around a bit with the setup of all this to get a feeling for it.

Here is an example for this report:

You are done!

So that was it. This is the general procedure to create Reports manually. If you want further information, simply take a look at the MonitorWare Console Manual under Reports Manager.