Include Data in Reports

When you design a report in VertiGIS Studio Report Designer, one of your tasks is to specify the data that you want to include in the report. VertiGIS Studio reports can include spatial and non-spatial data from sources like ArcGIS layers and tables, JSON, and relational databases such as SQL Server and Oracle (see Available Data Source Types).

To get data from a data source, VertiGIS Studio Reporting needs to know how to connect to the data source. To provide this information, you configure the data source's connection information in Report Designer. You only need to configure a data source's connection information once. After that, you can use the data source in any report that you author.

After you have configured a data source's connection information, you add the data source to your report and specify which fields you want to use in the report. This makes the fields available for you to add to the report's layout.

To limit the records that are included in a report, you can place conditions on the query that gets the data or pass input parameters to the report. When a report runs, the data references in the report are populated with their values and presented according to your design.

VertiGIS Studio Reporting supports different ways of visualizing data in a report, including tables, bar charts, line charts (sparklines), and more. You can format data fields using the same methods that you use to format any report content.

Available Data Source Types

VertiGIS Studio Reporting supports the following data source types:

ArcGIS layers and tables, SQL Server databases, and other types of relational databases are similar in that you have firm control over how report data is collected. Typically, you use Report Designer to specify a connection to the data source and configure the query directly in the report. When you run the report, Reporting queries the data source and uses the results to generate the report.

By comparison, using JSON to collect report data is a significantly different process. You still use Report Designer when you define the structure of the source data for the report. But then the client application running the report supplies the data, instead of a Reporting query. On the request to run the report, the client application must supply the source data as JSON.

Main Steps to Use Data in a Report

The main steps to use data in a report are as follows:

  1. Configure the data source's connection information.

  2. Configure the query that will get the data.

    1. Add the data source to the report.

      This step creates the query and allows you to specify which fields you want the query to return.

    2. Add filter conditions to the query.

      This step restricts the records that the query returns.

    3. Configure the report to take inputs, if you want.

      This is one method of restricting the records returned by the query.

  3. Add Data Fields to the Report Layout and format them.