Export FR without using Financial Reporting Studio

Question

Good morning.
Is that possible to get the reports designed at Financial Reporting Studio to import into another machine?
I'm asking this because I ain't able to access this machine anymore. So, did an other machine, but now, with a new database, with no reports =)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Rafael Marques

Answer 1

I know that there is a report migration tool as we used it when we went from 7.2.5 to 9.3.1. I'm not 100% if you can make use of it as a simple 'copy' tool (i.e. copying same software version reports from one server to the next or if it only works in a specific upgrade capacity); however, I would start on that route first.
I think the road block you will hit there; however, is that I think the environment would need to be up and running for this utility to work.
If that is the case, the manual route is ugly. As I've talked about in a prevoius post, reports (since system 9) are scattered in a couple different pieces. In the Workspace database, you will find information that ties a UUID (Unique Identifier) to a 'Friendly Name'. In the file system of your server running the RM web application, you will find the actual report files. The files / folders for the reports are not human friendly; therefore, you need the DB to fix the names. The other issue you have here is the database connection for the reports. When you create a database connection it also gets a generated Unique ID value which is stored in the reports. If that ID does not exist in the target system, you need to update all of the reports; otherwise, they will not work correctly.
If I HAD to do this manually (i.e. old workspace isn't operational so I can't export), here's what I would do ..........
------- WARNING ------------ I don't think anyone here is going to approve of this method and I really don't either, but ....................
"Old System" to "New System"
#1 - New System --> create your database connection(s), preferably with same name(s) as previous environment
#2 - Old --> Locate naming information in Workspace database tables (If you don't know where this is, find a previous post I put out on reports and the database where I explain this)
#3 - Old --> Locate the physical files / directories (See previous post on subject)
#4 - Old --> Find at least ONE report for EACH database connection used in the old system. Open the file(s) in notepad and locate the connection ID. (NOTE : Files are compressed so get something like 7zip to get into them)
#5 - New --> Open the Workspace database, locate the database connection information. For each connection you have created, update the ID to correspond to the ID found in the reports.
At this point, we have a couple of different options......
Option 1 - Create your own export archive
Now that you know where all of the old reports are and you know the proper naming of the reports, you can make your own export archive which you can then import into the new environment. The structure of the 7zip archive would be something like this
ReportExtract.7z
(null) Folder --> This would correspond to your Root folder in Workspace
My Report Folder 1 --> Your workspace stuff here
My Report Folder 2 --> Etc.
The import thing to recognize here is that when you first open the 7z file, you have to have that NULL folder; otherwise, this doesn't work. I'm not sure how to create such a null folder, so what I normally do is create an extract file using the Workspace Export option and then use 7zip to alter the archive to include what I really want ....
#1 - Old --> Fix names. Using the information from the workspace database write a quick script to traverse the file / folder structure and renaming all folders and files so that they have the friendly name.
#2 - Old --> For the files that were just renamed, uncompress them. This can be accomplished with a bat file script as well.
#3 - New --> Go to File Export and choose the highest folder you can and export all items. Save the file somewhere handy as you're going ot need this right away.
#4 - Old --> Open the archive with 7zip. You will see a folder with no name, double click on it. Now you should see the beginning of your report structure (if you have one on the new environment....)
#5 - Old --> Using windows explorer, DRAG and DROP the folders/files from steps #1/#2 into the 7zip window. 7zip will then add those folders/files to the report archive we created.
#6 New --> Login to workspace and select the File, Import option. Proceed to use the archive created previously. If everything is done correctly, the reports will pull in and you will be good to go at this point. (OTHER THAN SECURITY)
Option 2 - Manually Copy Files/Folders and Database entries
While in theory this is slightly quicker, I've never attempted so I won't say for fact this will work. I would probably only recommend trying this is the old and new machines are running the SAME version of software AND the new machine has nothing added to it yet.....
#1 - Locate RM1 service folder and copy all files/folders to new server's RM folder
#2 - Locate the old database tables related to report files/folders/permissions/data connections and copy data into new database tables.