Brio'Portal Implementation at the IMF

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Brio.Portal Implementationat the IMF
Nathan Stratton Treadway Ray Ontko
Co. nathanst_at_ontko.com Brio Mid-Atlantic Users
Group Wednesday, May 9, 2001
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Session Overview

• Project Environment
• Portal Requirements
• Architecture Overview
• Security Interface
• Report Load Manager
• SPECT Utility
• Pitfalls and Tips
• Resources

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Project Environment

• PeopleSoft 6 Financials
• List of projects defined in a PeopleSoft security
  tree
• Tree includes
• Division TGSIA, TGSIB, etc.
• Sections TGSIAS1, TGSIAS2, etc.
• Units TGSIAS1U1, TGSIAS1U2
• Projects B0001, B0002, etc.
• Custom table and panel used to grant permissions
  from "Network Id" to tree nodes

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Portal Requirements

• Users need to see reports based on their
  permissions
• Minimize manual maintenance of Portal security
  info
• No external authentication source available
  (LDAP, etc.)
• Minimize need for in-house Java skills

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Architecture Overview, I

• Security Interface -- SQR
• from PeopleSoft to Portal using "Brio.Portal
  Security" (BPS) system
• Report Load Manager -- SQR
• Loads report files into proper Category (from
  Unix directories)
• SPECT -- Java (ONE/API)
• called by the Security Interface and the Load
  Manager to perform actual changes in Portal

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Architecture Overview, II

• SQR used to generate various reports on
  PeopleSoft budget data
• most reports run nightly in Maestro at each level
  of the Project tree hierarchy and loaded into
  proper category
• several reports also loaded into Portal to allow
  "ad hoc" executions based on current Portal user
• A few related interfaces generate log files,
  which are loaded directly into hard-coded Portal
  categories

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Architecture Overview, III

• Current statistics (approx)
• 100 users
• 50 groups
• 175 categories
• 45 based on Project nodes, plus three additional
  archive categories for each node
• remaining categories are for interface logs, etc.
• 50 SQRs' output being loaded into Portal (both
  reports and interface logs)

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Security Interface

• runs nightly from Maestro/cron
• written in SQR (3 parts)
• writes a SPECT file, then calls SPECT
• uses several local Oracle tables to keep track of
  changes made in "source" systems (staging
  tables)
• modular structure allows security information to
  be obtained from several sources
• PeopleSoft Projects tree
• other trees, "Group Security" table/panel

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Report Load Manager

• also written in SQR
• also generates file and calls SPECT
• uses report file name to look up report
  properties and calculate the destination category
  (staging tables / business rules in code)
• eg. imfpc212_TGSI.pdf or imfpc212_TGSIAS1.pdf
• invoked with a directory path and filename mask,
  loads all reports that match

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SPECT

• Java ONE/API program
• reads a text control file and performs specified
  actions to Portal repository
• released under the GPL
• download from http//www.ontko.com/portal/spect
  (new version for Portal v7 is currently in
  development)

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Sample SPECT control file

• create user TestUser passwordwelcome
  description"Test User"
• update user TestUser email"testuser_at_somewher
  e.com"
• update category "/Demo/Private"
  groupEmployee permissions700
• delete file "/Demo/Private/Demo.doc"

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Pitfalls and Tips, I

• Choosing Category Structure, I
• Categories sort in alphabetical order on Portal
  display
• choose category names carefully -- we started
  ours with the tree node name
• categories such as "IMFIAS1 Section Title" sort
  BEFORE "IMFI Dept Title" in the category listing
• Project categories had to be treated specially,
  since project names don't sort correctly (Bxxxx
  instead of TGSxxxxx)

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Pitfalls and Tips, II

• Choosing Category Structure, II
• Most users have access to only a few tree nodes
  low in the hierachy, so we flattened the
  structure inside of Portal

• (Unflattened)
• TGSIA
• TGSIAS1
• TGSIAS1U1
• TGSIAS1U2
• TGSIAS2

• (Flattened)
• TGSIA
• TGSIAS1
• TGSIAS1U1
• TGSIAS1U2
• TGSIAS2

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Pitfalls and Tips, III

• Choosing Category Structure, III
• Consider archiving needs
• we originally just planned to save a large number
  of versions on each report object -- too clumsy
• instead, we now have Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly
  archive subcategories
• each report object has a maximum of only 8-13
  versions

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Pitfalls and Tips, IV

• Choose output type(s) desired
• We concentrate on PDF since users need to print
  rather than browse on-line
• Dynamic jobs are set to "Run in Background" so
  HTML isn't automatically displayed to the user
• Portal patches
• SPECT "pushes the envelope" a bit on the ONE/API

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Pitfalls and Tips, V

• Watch out for SQR output bugs
• various versions of SQR have limits on, and buggy
  generation of, PDF output
• many versions of SQR 4.3.x and 5.x crash with
  "-burstpNN" option (for generating HTML output)
• SQRP included with Portal v6 has problems with
  GIF files in PDF reports
• so, test each kind of output you need -- you may
  need to use two versions of SQR simultaneously

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Resources

• rm-users mailing list http//www.sqrug.com/rm-us
  ers
• Brio Tech Support FAQ http//briofaq.brio.com/scr
  ipts/faq.exe/
• SQRUG Links page and Library http//www.sqrug.co
  m