Choosing the right data source for Report Builder

When creating Report Builder reports, you can use data from the data warehouse or from Lifecycle Query Engine. The table lists the factors to consider as you figure out which data source is best for you.

Data warehouse

The Data Collection Component requests changes from the IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management applications and the changes are sent to the relational database.

Lifecycle Query Engine

The Lifecycle Query Engine requests changes from the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications and Lifecycle Query Engine stores and indexes the information locally.

Use the following comparison table to decide which data source to use for running your reports. Look down the left column to identify the features you need most.

Table 1. Decision table for choosing a data source.
Decision points Which data source to use?
Data warehouse Lifecycle Query Engine
Report on versioned data in configurations and components.   A check mark icon

Lifecycle Query Engine for configurations and components themselves.

Lifecycle Query Engine scoped by a configuration for versioned artifacts in configurations and components.
Report on historical trends. A check mark icon A check mark icon
Report on the specific elements:
  • IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next: View results, tags
  • IBM Engineering Test Management: Lab management resources
  • IBM Engineering Workflow Management: Build information
A check mark icon  
You have thousands of active users. A check mark icon  
You have more than 5 million resources in the projects that you want to report on. A check mark icon A check mark icon
Your server hardware has a minimum of 24 CPU and 96 GB RAM.   A check mark icon

See the hardware recommendations for Lifecycle Query Engine.
You want a mature set of ready-to-use and ready-to-copy reports. A check mark icon Additional Lifecycle Query Engine ready-to-copy reports are available from jazz.net.
You are interested in more flexible schema-less reports, for example, using free text search.   A check mark icon
Report only on data from the applications in the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications. A check mark icon A check mark icon
Report on data from non-Engineering Lifecycle Management data providers (IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS ). A check mark icon A check mark icon
Query language (for manual query editing) SQL SPARQL

Considerations

The data source for reporting on versioned artifacts in configurations is called Lifecycle Query Engine scoped by a configuration. If you upgrade from version 6.0.2 or earlier, the data source is called Lifecycle Query Engine using configurations.

For more information, watch the following video: