I’ve now heard from several separate sources the rumor being floated around that Epicor corp is stating they will be deprecating BAQ Reports and the BAQ Report Designer, and instead going forward to straight SSRS report writing and developing data sources within the RDL files themselves. But I cannot find any documentation or ‘announcement’ via official Epicor.
Has anyone else heard this?
Can’t wait to see the responses and conspiracy theories on this one 
Honestly thought, in my opinion, it would be an ok move to do so - over time - like all other major changes as small shops like mine cannot absorb a technology/learning change like this very quickly. I don’t think you can get away from BAQs that easily. Those editors will be difficult in Kinetic and while I’ve heard about them working on it, I’ve got nothing concrete.
I wonder what the long-term outlook is for Data Discovery. I mean, it could all go to EDA and SSRS - or PowerBI and SSRS (see the speculation that SSRS is being converted to PowerBI Paginated reports - Can Epicor use Azure SQL as the database - #4 by Mark_Wonsil) and you get the idea that it might all be PowerBI in the end - or a combination of EDA and roll-your-own reporting - that is, IF we’re speculating of course.
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BAQs also drive dashboards, quick search’s, named searches, BAQ search’s Updatable Dashboards, not to mention just using BAQ Editor to quickly solve an issue by whipping up a BAQ to look at the data. I could see getting rid of RDD and going with BAQs for everything, but on the other hand just when I get the hang of something they get rid of it. Progress Report Builder, BAQs to Crystal Reports now BAQs to SSRS so I’m not surprised.
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Oh, I doubt that they’re deprecating BAQs. I believe that Jason said that they’re deprecating BAQ Reports and the BAQ Report Designer.
Like Mike said, Power BI Reports is a lot like EDD. BI Reports are displayed in iFrames and have drill-down capabilities, etc. Power BI Paginated Reports is basically the same RDL we know and love. (
)
In the Epicor Reporting Flow, there is data collection portion (RDD/BAQ) and then there’s the reporting portion of the extracted data (Crystal/SSRS/whatever). Optinoally, there’s routing after that. What I’d like to see is a clean separation between:
-
Data extraction(in some portable format (JSON, XML, text files, …)
-
Report creation (PDF, Word, Excel, …)
-
Routing (print, email, Document Management, Blob Storage, …)
This would greatly simplify the product. Having well-defined concerns makes discovering and recovering from errors so much easier. Today, if a report isn’t received in an email, we don’t know if it was caught in the SPAM folder, rejected for size by the MTA, error in report generation, error in data extraction, or “No Data Selected”. 
Using an event-driven process, it would be quite simple to restart/resend at any step. There would be no more embedded HTML in C# (
). One would have automatic archiving for as long as your retention policy required. We could version reports and reprint at any step - including labels. One could generate EDI and PDF from the same data extraction ensuring the data was consistent.
A girl can dream…
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Getting rid of RDD does sound nice… but my guess is it is here to stay.
If Epicor does consolidate the data thru RDD in future versions maybe…
they’ll be able to make the reporting “user experience” a little more likeable while they are at it?
I can dream too… just lowered expectations.
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ouch - I use BAQ reports as a workaround to automate just about everything without paying for a scheduled process runner.
create a system agent task on a schedule…
create a UBAQ with a GetList directive containing any C# you want…
create a BAQ report using that UBAQ…
add a routing widget “generate report” …
run the report in BAQ report designer, saving it to the system agent task
I’ll leave the conspiracy theory unsaid…
I think the other thread that is related to this is
The advantage of doing the RDD and SSRS report is you can pass parameters in there. It is useful to reduce amount of data you get back from the BAQ and add filter afterwards. But BAQ report is quick and easy to make. Good for simple report.
I hope Epicor will improve the performance of the RDD first.
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So far my research has not turned up any communications from Epicor corp on future plans of deprecating the BAQ Report Designer and BAQ report creation in general. I wonder if @timshuwy or @Edge may have any insights as to the future of the BAQ Report Designer in Epicor?
What they really need to do is to build something to allow SSRS to use the BAQ API. Then you get the best of both worlds.
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oh cool - that calls GetList?
I did a little digging internally, and from what I can tell, the BAQ Report option IS in Kinetic, and is not slated to go away. I have not heard the message from anyone that this feature is being depreciated.
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Thanks Tim. I had some other resources at Epicor also confirm the same thing. I’ve heard that rumor now from several different places so I wanted to check into it. As much effort that Epicor pushed into really developing great tools within the application that don’t require the customer to have to hire advanced technically skilled resources to manage the software… I just couldn’t see them getting rid of something like the BAQ Report Designer.
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that’s a cool idea. Can you call web endpoints in the scripts of a field in SSRS?
No, not in any method that I am aware of.
Found this after a quick google. I’ve seen the URL option but never used it before
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If I want to create a report from a BAQ now, then I’m using the Report Data Definition screen and the Report Style - not touching BAQ Report Designer. You can have a BAQ as a data source.
I’m on 10.2.300, so this option has been around a while. I was also told by a 3rd party consultant that BAQ Report Designer is being phased out in favour of this “new” approach.
I’ve now heard from several separate sources the rumor being floated around that Epicor corp is stating they will be deprecating BAQ Reports and the BAQ Report Designer, and instead going forward to straight SSRS report writing and developing data sources within the RDL files themselves. But I cannot find any documentation or ‘announcement’ via official Epicor
Lets get those sources better informed.There are no plans to deprecate BAQ or BAQ Reports. Hope that helps!
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it does. I have enough reports now that I have noticed a pattern. What Mark said above has been the pattern" I was also told by a 3rd party consultant that BAQ Report Designer is being phased out in favor of this “new” approach."
In almost every instance it is a 3rd party partner or 3rd party consultant that has said it.