My company is in the middle of an Epicor Kinetic implementation (SaaS), and I’ve just started learning how to make custom BAQs and custom reports. I’ve read a few documentations and topics on the forum, and understand that there is a difference between:
BAQ Reports (created in BAQ Report Designer, only 1 BAQ), and
BAQ-based RDD’s (specified in Report Data Definition Maintenance > Data Sources > Report BAQ, can define more than 1 BAQ)
Right now I still can’t wrap my head around RDD’s (adding table joins in query manually? so confusing), but BAQ Report Designer seems much easier.
When I create a BAQ and then setup the report through BAQ Report Designer, it automatically creates a style and data definition for the report. My question is, why is the RDD not consistent with the components in Report Builder?
For example, here is the RDD that was automatically generated by BAQ Report Designer that shows Report Labels are empty.
I’ve tried clicking on the “Analyze and Include RDD” and “Synchronize Dataset for BAQ report” buttons on the overflow menu of Report Style, but it doesn’t seem to do anything.
Am I missing something?
Also what is the best way to make custom reports? BAQ Report Designer or RDD? I’ve seen a few older topics on the forum that discuss this but opinions seem to be mixed.
Think of the RDD as the dataset to send to the report db to query on and it is created against a specific GUID at run time thus creating your dataset with the appeneded GUID code. When you update an RDD you add/edit/remove columns from the data table(s) within the tables to be sent to the report db. You need to update the RDL (report) with the changes you made manually as it will know nothing of where to place the table column data within your report even if you do not have it shown. It might be a hidden item to group or sort by. The RDL will not know what to do if you do not update the datasets and fields(columns) in a given dataset as these are not translated automatically. Hope that helps explain somewhat.
Thanks, that does explain why I have to update the RDL manually after making changes in the RDD. Is there any documentation that you can point me to for Kinetic 2024 that explains how to update the RDL?
But this explanation is for when I make the RDD myself right? How come when the RDD is generated automatically by BAQ Report Designer, it doesn’t seem consistent with the RDL? Does the system handle those two things differently?
Also, I read somewhere on this forum that if you don’t need any of the functionality that the RDD does, then make it as a BAQ report. But what does a BAQ-based RDD do that BAQ Report Designer can’t do besides having multiple BAQs?
This is for any change to any RDD (Report Data Definition) and if you change the RDD the RDL will no longer match. To update the RDL you would use Report Builder.
The BAQ style allows you to bring in multiple BAQ’s versus multiple linked tables in the standard base RDD’s. Normally the base RDD will use the existing table relationships to provide linked fields available where in a BAQ RDD you would need to define any relationships between them and create the SQL to pull in the datasets in the RDL (Report). Also, it would only work against a single BAQ Dataset instead of multiples ones, but you can gain that functionality by manually editing the RDL.
I’m almost positive there are examples which talk about updating RDL’s on the forum here in Kinetic, but AFAIK Kinetic still uses SSRS reports and Microsoft’s Report Builder would be the go-to tool of choice to edit these RDL files after modifying an RDD.
The system uses the same method for both. An RDD to build a dataset to send to the Report DB to generate a Report from an RDL (Report Definition Language) file.
NOTE: That being said, you can build custom datasets using a custom datasource against a custom RDL, but this does not play as nice within the Epicor framework and is handled differently.
Hey Clint,
Sorry for the late reply, been doing a lot of trial and error. I’ve still got a lot more learning to do, but appreciate you spending your time helping me understand a bit more!
