Is it possible to create a RDD BAQ Report with a normal BAQ and a External BAQ? Even though I can see the External Checkbox in the Search window for the BAQs, can’t seem to get the External BAQ to show even though its approved for the current company.
Not 100% sure, but is the External BAQ Shared?
Sounds like the question is about the newer BAQ reporting where multiple BAQs can be used as the Report data source.
That does not support External BAQs as the “Set” of BAQs used for the Report is stitched into a single SQL query which is then executed against the Epicor DB. Even if the External BAQ is setup against the Epicor DB, the BAQ execution path is different so those are also excluded.
Yes it was shared
So what it sounds like I will not be able to do this entirely in the Epicor ecosystem. Ill resort to adding a datasource inside of the SSRS Report then unless you have any other suggestions.
Perhaps ill mark this as a feature request
For those that come across this thread, this was the response I got from the Epicor Dev team in a Epicare Case.
What they said is that the plumbing for external BAQs to be included with an RDD is there for future use, but this ability is not currently intended and why the search is hardcoded to exclude external BAQs from the results. There is no current estimate for the feature to be implemented.
So this is currently not possible.
Worth noting that External BAQs are not available to SaaS users, which is the first test bed for all new code. That’s why there were issues in 10.2.600 once on-prem users started upgrading.
I (probably alone on this one) would prefer a different data access replacement for External BAQs - maybe one based on REST, GraphQL, gRPC, or some data gateway product (like Microsoft has for M365). For all the reasons that are given against direct database access to Epicor may equally apply to other sources. And if those data sources end up in the cloud, the security posture of direct database is weaker than using application level access.
Currently, Epicor doesn’t allow REST calls from their servers (in SaaS) for good security reasons. A reincarnation of the External BAQ as another product that handles the security issues might be a better solution than extending the life of a capability that not all Epicor users can even leverage.
Again, just a thought…