Advanced Customization > Business Logic Customization > Report Generation > Customization Details > Customizing the Report Output Format > XML Result Format
  
XML Result Format
Understanding the query result XML format is extremely important to successfully retrieving the desired data from it using XSLT (or any other technique). An outline of this format is shown below. The portions in bold represent dynamic data and ellipses (...) represent omitted items.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<queryResult>
<metadata>
<name>Report Name</name>
<description>Report Description</description>
<objectIdentifier>Report Object Id</objectIdentifier>
<sourceSystem>Windchill Codebase URL</sourceSystem>
<sourceGateway>Windchill Gateway URL</sourceGateway>
<executingPrincipal>
<fullName>User’s Full Name</fullName>
<objectIdentifier>User Object ID</objectIdentifier>
</executingPrincipal>
<timeOfExecution>Time when Executed</timeOfExecution>
<locale>Locale of User</locale>
</metadata>
<auxData>
<dataItem name="requestParam1">value</dataItem>
. . .
<dataItem name="requestParamN">value</dataItem>
</auxData>
</qml>
. . .
</qml>
<actualParameter parameterId="ParamName1"> Value
</actualParameter>
. . .
<actualParameter parameterId="ParamNameN"> Value
</actualParameter>
<result>
<heading tag="column1TagName"
type="Java data type">column header</heading>
. . .
<heading tag="columnNTagName"
type="Java data type">column header</heading>
<row idx="1">
<column1TagName>value</column1TagName>
. . .
<columnNTagName>value</ColumnTagName>
</row>
. . .
<row idx="N">
. . .
</row>
</result>
</queryResult>
If an entire Windchill top-level object (a Persistable) is selected, additional attributes are generated on the column tag element, including the object ID, branch ID (if the object is versioned), and classname of the object. WTUser objects also include email attributes. These attributes are generated primarily to facilitate generation of hyperlinks. Out-of-the-box XSLT stylesheets for HTML and PDF formats use these attributes whenever they are present to produce hyperlinks to the objects.
Additional flexibility for generating hyperlinks is provided by use of the characters $$ in column names. If a column name containing $$ is specified through the Query Builder, an individual cell is not created for it; instead, the name is parsed as follows. If the part of the column name preceding $$ matches another column name that does not contain $$, its data is added to the other column as an attribute, which is determined by the part following $$.
For example, assume the following columns are specified through Query Builder:
• Part
• Part$$branchID
• Part$$type
Each XML row would then contain a Part element like the following:
<Part branchID="dataFromBranchIdColumn"
type="dataFromTypeColumn">dataFromPartColumn</Part>
Rows would not contain individual Part$$branchID or Part$$type columns. This functionality allows you to select the right data to obtain hyperlinks (as described earlier in this section) without having to select entire Persistable objects.
If the column type is java.util.Date, column data is formatted based on the HTTP request's Locale. In addition, the column element has a "value" attribute containing the raw Java string value. If other date-formatting customization is needed, this value could be used.
The table below summarizes the data conveyed by the various top-level elements in the query result XML.
Element
Description
metadata
Meta-information about the query from which the data resulted and the user executing it.
auxData
The request parameters used.
qml
Fully defines the details of the report template query which was made (see <Windchill codebase>/wt/query/qml/qml.dtd for further details).
actualParameters
The query parameters used when executing the query.
result
The column headers and types, and the rows of data.