Deciding which Engineering Lifecycle Management reporting option to use

IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management offers you four types of reporting options to use, which include Jazz® Reporting Service, IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing, Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool (BIRT), and IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization Engineering Insights. Jazz Reporting Service is the default reporting tool for Engineering Lifecycle Management.

Jazz Reporting Service comprises the following components:
  • Report Builder to create or edit your report.
  • Lifecycle Query Engine to index your Engineering Lifecycle Management data (a data source for Report Builder and Engineering insights)
  • Data Collection Component to collect data from the applications and store it in the data warehouse, which is a data source for Report Builder
IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing, is used to create template-based printable document-style reports. Users can generate these reports by using Publishing Document Builder. It includes the following parts:
  • Document Studio, an Eclipse workstation-based authoring environment for IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing reporting templates, which includes report generation
  • Document Builder, a web application that practitioners use to schedule and generate reports by using templates that are authored in Document Studio
  • Engineering Document Generation, an embedded runtime component that is included with Document Studio, Document Builder, and the Engineering Lifecycle Management products, including IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody® and IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS®

Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool (BIRT) is an open source project for document generation. BIRT is a legacy reporting tool that can be used with IBM Engineering Workflow Management , and IBM Engineering Test Management. BIRT is not recommended for new IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management deployments or new reports. Use JRS instead.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization Engineering Insights , can be used to visualize engineering data across applications and do interactive dependency analysis.

In deciding what option to use, you must also consider these factors:

  • Depending on your applications and the type of information that you want to report on, your data can be collected in a data warehouse by Data Collection Component or indexed by Lifecycle Query Engine.
  • You can use JRS Report Builder with versioned data with the configuration management enabled or unversioned data with the configuration management not enabled, or in the work items, artifacts are not versioned. If you collect data about configurations, you must use an Lifecycle Query Engine Type-filtered data source. See Choosing the right data source.
  • ALM Cognos® Connector is no longer available.

Choosing the best reporting option

Use this table to make sure that you have the best reporting option or to explore other possibilities.

The following table lists various decision points. After you find the ones that apply to you, see which reporting options to consider.

Table 1. Reporting options
Decision points JRS Report Builder Publishing Document Builder EDG PUB Built-in BIRT reports in Engineering Lifecycle Management Engineering Insights views
Generate informational formats. Graphs, charts, row and column reports, drill-down data Printable Printable Printable Graphs, charts Live views
Generate output formats. Export to dashboards and Word, Excel, PDF, HTML files.
Note: JRS reports can be exported as PUB templates.
Word, PDF, Excel, HTML, XSL-FO files Word, PDF, HTML files Word, PDF, Excel, HTML files Dashboards  
Use a mature set of predefined reports. A check mark icon A check mark icon For IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next only A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon
Create brand-new reports or customize existing reports. A check mark icon No, import from PUB No, import from PUB. Imported reports cannot include JRS queries. A check mark icon   A check mark icon
Scope agile reports across projects, teams, and iterations. A check mark icon A check mark icon by using the reports that are imported from PUB Report on only one application.     A check mark icon
Report on the most recent data. A check mark icon LQE uses live data. Data Collection Component has a time lapse of 10 minutes. The default time lapse is 12 hours. A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon
Report on historical trends. A check mark icon Typically using Data Collection Component          
Report on data within one Engineering Lifecycle Management application. A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon
Report on data across applications, even non- Engineering Lifecycle Management applications. A check mark icon and IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS A check mark icon. Report on one application only. A check mark iconFor more information, see Integrating.   A check mark iconOnly Engineering Lifecycle Management applications
Report on versioned data in configurations. A check mark icon

Only with Lifecycle Query Engine

A check mark icon A check mark iconOnly when the global configuration is enabled, based on current configuration context when you start the report. A check mark icon   A check mark icon
Create traceability reports. A check mark icon A check mark icon   A check mark icon   A check mark icon
Add your report to a dashboard. A check mark icon A check mark icon Embed in dashboards   A check mark iconEmbed in dashboards A check mark icon A check mark icon
Generate large printable documents that have custom headers, logos, fonts, and front and back matter.   A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon    
Include full requirements text and diagrams. A check mark icon Data Collection Component has a 255-character limit. A check mark icon A check mark icon A check mark icon    
Visualize complex engineering data.           A check mark icon
Customize data collection. A check mark icon Only with Data Collection Component          
Use multiple Jazz Team Servers. A check mark icon A check mark icon   A check mark icon   A check mark icon
Where to find this option? Installed with Engineering Lifecycle Management Additional installation and license required. Installed with Engineering Lifecycle Management products that include IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody and IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Additional installation and license required Manually installed Installed with Engineering Lifecycle Management. Additional license required
Note: If you are reporting on requirements from IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next with the data warehouse, the complete primary text is not stored because the Jena index can hold a maximum of 1024 characters when the data collection job runs. Any longer text is truncated.