Collaborator comes with a number of pre-built and customizable reports. However, if you would like to automate a report for integration with external tools or applications, or if you would like to create your own reports, you can access the underlying database directly.
| Note: | Collaborator does not support querying Hypersonic databases. You will need to use one of the other databases supported by Collaborator. |
Creating Custom SQL Reports
In many cases, you may want report output slightly different than one of the existing customizable reports. In these cases, it may be simplest to begin with a report that outputs most of the data that you want, then modify its database query as needed.
- Open a customizable report that best matches the type of report you would like to create.
- Choose the columns you wish to display in the report, and the criteria by which you would like to filter the results.
- Click the Save button.
- Verify that the first few results contain the data you expect.
- Click the SQL link at the top-right of the Results pane. This will download an SQL query appropriate for your database which you can use as a starting point for your custom report.
- Reference the Collaborator database schema and documentation for your database's SQL dialect (MySQL, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL) to modify the query as you see fit.
- Execute the query directly against the database using whatever SQL tool you like. Some tools that can run SQL queries include: Excel, Access, Crystal Reports, and Business Objects.
Custom XSL Reports
You can alternatively use the Command-Line Client to retrieve XML data regarding a review. For samples of this, see: Example XPath and XSL.