============
Introduction
============

Problem Statement
=================

Windchill provides advanced search and reporting capabilities using the
**Report Builder** utility.  This utility OOTB allows the user to create
"saved searches" which are reusable.

These reports use a **XML** language to specify queries and parameters to
queries.  The Report Builder utility features a graphical UI to create
reports.

.. image:: report-manager.jpg
   :width: 800px

Unfortunately, these reports are persistent-only, and can't used by-name.
Thus, when developing web applications which need reports, the appropriate
report needs to be manually created or imported to Windchill, and a
reference to the report must be stored in the web application.

Additionally, there's no way to specify a report XML w/o creating a
persistent report object.  This is unfortunate, as ad-hoc reporting is very
much limited by this fact.

Goal
====

The goal of the **nexiles|gateway report service** is to:

- provide easy access to existing reports:
  - list reports, filter by name, number
  - execute reports, returning **XML** results

- execute a ad-hoc report query by HTTP POST-ing a report XML

  This allows users to build web applications which assemble their own
  report XMLs by e.g. dynamically adding criteria based on user selection
  w/o having to persistently store reports.


Repository, Issue Tracker
=========================

**repository**
    git@github.com:nexiles/nexiles.gateway.reportservice.git

**issue tracker**
    https://github.com/nexiles/nexiles.gateway.reportservice/issues

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