Report viewing with the Report Application Server

Upon receiving a report-viewing request, the RAS checks to see if it has the requested report data in cache. (The RAS has its own caching mechanism, which is separate from the Cache Server.) If cached report data is available, the RAS checks with the CMS to see if the user has rights to view the report. If the user is granted the right to view the report, the RAS returns .epf pages to the application server.

If a cached version of the page is unavailable, the RAS retrieves the report from the Input File Repository Server, first checking with the CMS to see if the user has rights to view the report. The RAS then processes the report and returns the .epf pages to the application server.

If the user is granted View rights to the report object, then the RAS will only ever generate pages of the latest report instance. That is, the RAS will not retrieve the latest data from the database. If, however, the user is granted View On Demand rights to the report object, then the RAS will refresh the report against the database.

Note:    The interactive search and filter features provided by the Advanced DHTML viewer are available only if the user has View On Demand rights (or greater) to the report object.

When the application server receives the .epf pages from the RAS, the viewer SDK is used to generate HTML that represents both the Advanced DHTML viewer and the report itself. The HTML pages are then returned through the web server to the user's web browser.

Related topics

• What happens when you view a report?