how to design communication between transaction

[Former Member]

Hi experts,

There is the scenario:

customer want a single report from MII to show production overview of certain period say from week 1 to week 10 as well as detail view of selected week on the overview.

We are going to design as follows:

transaction data_process to load data from DB via multiple fix query, process them and save the processed data to a XML file. The URL of the XML file is an output transaction property. Because SQL are very complicated and time consuming, this transaction is designed to be called only once when the report starts.

transaction overview to display the production overview and is called after data_process, the URL of XML generated in data_process is passed to it.

transaction detailview is envoked when user selected a week in the overview and this transaction may be triggered several times when report is running.

Because I don't know if there is common variable in MII to transfer complicated data between multiple transactions, so the XML file is used to do this. Is it the right way to do this?

Thanks a lot,

Tony.

[Former Member]

I second the databse suggestion. Files get unweildly fast and with a database you can push a lot of the report proccessing on it.

Determine the granularity you're customer needs and build a data model to accomdate this. Usually by the hour is sufficient, and then have roll up tables( shift, day, week, month, year: machine, line, plant etc... depends on youre current needs but plan for the future ). Run a job every hour to aggregate the data in the background and then your left with just building a nice data browser with snappy performance for youre end users

[Former Member]

thanks for all the inputs, I may not have made myself clear. The report is time based data analysis, on the overview chart display customer may want to show data, for example from week 1 to week 19, or from month 2 to month 4( via initial selection screen). They also want to show detail grid screens by clicking different point on the chart. My concern is in the transaction of the overview chart, all the data has been retrieved from bunch of complicated SQL, how can I "share" these data with the transaction of detail grid screen? Also the selection conditions are quite different from time to time, there is no way to aggregate data in db by schedule jobs.

I am kind of frustrated because there are so many limitations of MII, to plot some complicated logic via BLS is a nightmare to me and also the debug. For the reporting functionality, I would say JAVA, JSP is way too easier.

[Former Member]

Unfamiliarity with a tool does not make the tool inferior

[Former Member]

Tony, you may have better results using a "scheduled" transaction to do the data extract and aggregation, and place this data either in an XML cache or in a relational database (the latter will give you best performance and flexibility), then have the individual reports/drilldowns use this aggregated data.

[former_member202329]

Hi Tony,

The xml approach is fine if you dont bother about the latest information that would have changed after the data_process transaction is executed.

To tranfer complicated data between the transactions, the approach of xml is the best and effective.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards

Deepak

[Former Member]

Hi Deepak,

Finally someone replied. I am wondering if multiple user run these transactions, do we need to generate multiple xmls, any better solution?

Thanks,

Tony.