Aleph reporting with ARC�(according to someone who basically knows nothing)

October 27, 2022

How data gets from Aleph to ARC

https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Aleph/Product_Documentation/Aleph_Reporting_Center

Accessing ARC

• URL is http://arc.lib.duke.edu:8081/
• Need to be on VPN off campus
• Browser does matter! Try to use Edge or Firefox (IE default, but IE is not supported anymore). Safari seems okay, too.
• There are three levels of user accounts:
• consumer (use pre-programmed reports)
• We have three accounts: ARCConsumer1, ARCConsumer2, ARCConsumer3. All use password consumer999.
• author (write reports using Query Studio)
• Author: We have three accounts: ARCAuthor1, ARCAuthor2, ARCAuthor3. All use password author999.
• professional (write advanced reports using Report Studio).
• Professional: We have one account: ARCProfessionalAuthor1. The password is ptech999.

https://sharepoint-2013.oit.duke.edu/sites/perkins/DiscoveryServices/Shared%20Documents/ARC%20(Aleph%20Reporting%20Center)/access-to-arc.html

What does ARC contain?

• (Transformed) data from Aleph
• Limited fields available for inventory
• Data are organized by modules

Definition: “package” or “module”

A set of interrelated “tables” of data

Examples: Acquisition Orders, Inventory, Loans

Home page - Browse existing queries and reports

Folder with blue square = “package” or “module”

Account folders = a place to save custom queries

Launch menu = how to get to more advanced query building tools

Help menu (check out Getting Started)

Types of Folders

Folder with blue square = “package” or “module”

Plain folder = user-created folder, just for storage

Items in Folders

• Reports/Queries
• The main query specification
• Report Views
• A “view” or the query, or an output version
• Links to the query, but you can’t edit the query directly

Note: it’s hard to tell from the icon whether it’s a query or a report view

Query actions

• Set properties
• View recent reports
• Run report
• Edit report
• Schedule report

Report View actions

• Set properties
• View recent reports
• Run report
• Schedule report

Query properties: General

Query properties: Query

Report View properties: General

Report View properties: Report view

Ways to create queries

• Take an existing query, make a copy, and modify it
• Launch Query Studio or Report Studio directly
• ???

Copy a Query

• Browse the various folders (it’s all open to everyone)
• Find one that sounds interesting
• Click on More
• If you see “Open with Query Studio” and “Open with Report Studio”, it’s a query! Congrats!
• But don’t do that yet, first click on Copy and save your own version, either with a new name or a new location or both
• Then you can edit with Query Studio or Report Studio

Query Studio

• Pretty easy to use: start with sidebar on left and work your way through Insert Data, Edit Data, Change Layout, etc.
• Can only report against one module?
• Recommendation: go to “Run Report” and select Preview with Limited Data if you’re working with a really large dataset
• Can also go to “Manage File” and edit “My Preferences” to change the default data display, but that seems to change the default display, which presumably changes it for everyone using that same account
• From Query Studio, can go to “Manage File” and select “Open in Report Studio”

Report Studio

• (Help!)
• Sometimes clicking Open with Report Studio doesn’t seem to work. If Report Studio opens but it’s essentially empty, can use “Open” to select it from the folder structure
• Use the tiny blue button on the left to expand the sidebar
• Under Source, you can click the Refresh button to show the active package
• In Page Explorer, the Source window has three tabs at the bottom. If you go to the third, Toolbox, you can select an output format (e.g., List). Double clicking will generate a new query. On the Data Items tab, you should see the new query. On the Source tab, you can browse the package and add fields to the query by double clicking. Or you can hover over the Query Explorer, click once on the query, and see the detail view.
• In Query Explorer, if you right-click on a query name, you’ll see a View Tabular Data option, which will take you back to ARC (sort of) and show you the data in a way that will let you download.
• View -> Queries gives you a new query toolbox, including giving you the ability to create joins between queries. Maybe this is a way to do cross-package queries, if the different queries are connected to different packages? I couldn’t get it working. Looks like you can also generate queries from SQL.
• Getting weird errors in Report Studio, though, and can’t save reports.

Cognos Workspace

Looks like a way to take existing queries and report views and drag them into a dashboard

Live reporting?

• Set default action to view report or run report
• Grab the Default Action URL
• Add the following authentication information to the end of the URL:

&CAMUsername=ARCProfessionalAuthor1&CAMPassword=ptech999

• With XML output, can look for the <dataset></dataset> element

Example full URL:

http://arc-02.oit.duke.edu:8081/cognos10/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi?b_action=cognosViewer&ui.action=view&ui.object=defaultOutput(CAMID(%22default%3au%3auid%3darcprofessionalauthor1%2cou%3dadministrators%22)%2ffolder%5b%40name%3d%27My%20Folders%27%5d%2ffolder%5b%40name%3d%27Angela%20Zoss%27%5d%2freportView%5b%40name%3d%27Report%20View%20of%20Loan%20Activity%20in%20Reserves%20Collection%20Codes%20-%20Live%3a%20XML%27%5d)&ui.name=Report%20View%20of%20Loan%20Activity%20in%20Reserves%20Collection%20Codes%20-%20Live%3a%20XML&ui.format=XML&CAMUsername=ARCProfessionalAuthor1&CAMPassword=ptech999

ARC Reporting Challenges (From Erin)

• Definitions change between Aleph and ARC
• A loan in Aleph can be referred to in different ways in ARC
• There are pre-written measures in ARC that are difficult to understand due to lack of documentation (e.g., “number of loans” pre-defined measure)
• There is data inconsistency in ARC events data
• e.g., ARC has circulation events with years of 2100 and later
• ExLibris documentation for ARC is difficult to understand for those without a deeper understanding of Aleph’s underlying table architecture
• Cross-module reporting w/in ARC is out of the reach most of the time (may be possible in Report Studio)

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Post-Aleph Data Transformation (From Erin)

Rather than ARC reporting straight off of a copy of Aleph’s database, there is additional data transformation that occurs to create the ARC database. ExLibris describes it this way: “[The] transformation stage eliminates operational data anomalies by rationalizing data, adding required elements, integrating data from different sources within the system, and transforming it prior to loading.” (ExLibris, p. 2, 2014).

Data Mapping (From Erin)

Documentation exists about the mapping, but it consists of two 58 page PDF documents showing the table correspondence for Aleph → Data Staging, and then from Data Staging → ARC. Importantly, no information about how that mapping is done is provided within the ARC interface. If you want to verify what is known about a particular reporting element in ARC, you have to trace it manually through the two PDF files.

Note: Data lag

There is a “full” transfer on Friday nights and smaller daily loads.