Customizing the Report Generation Client
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This customization is supported for reports using custom input pages.
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The report generation client consists of an HTML form that can prompt the user for additional report generation input and an HTTP processor that executes the report and applies the XSL transformations. Both of these clients can be customized in the same manner as typical HTML client customizations. For further information, see
Customizing HTML Clients Using the Windchill JSP Framework .
In addition, report generation-specific code is available as static methods in a separate class so it can be reused. The ReportTemplateHelper class provides many methods for processing reports (See the wt.query.template.ReportTemplateHelper class entry in your installed Windchill Javadoc for more information).
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In previous releases, reports that used subtypes (that is, types created using the Type and Attribute Management utility) needed to be processed using the report commands (See the com.ptc.core.query.report.command.common package entry in your installed Windchill Javadoc for more information). The ReportTemplateHelper APIs now directly support subtypes and customer-created attributes. While report commands are still supported, they are no longer required.
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Both of the clients mentioned above rely on a wrapper API developed for XSLT processors. The API can be found in the wt.xml.xslt package entry in your installed Windchill Javadoc for more information.
This API provides the following functionality:
• Independence from individual XSLT implementations (for example, Saxon, the XSLT processor library currently in use)
• A high-level abstraction for XML source that hides the details of a particular implementation (for example, String, Java IO stream, DOM, or SAX)
• A clean API for XSLT operations in Windchill
• Easy-to-use, high-level facilities for complex chaining of XSLT transformations
For additional capabilities beyond those provided through this API, you can use the standard JAXP (Java API for XML Processing) APIs, or access Saxon directly. For further information, see the Saxon Web page, currently available at the following URL:
Note, however, that the XSLT library bundled with Windchill may change in the future and that users of the Windchill XSLT and JAXP APIs will be affected less by any such change.
