Technical Tips and Tweaks
Flex and Flash
As I am immersed in my new role as VP Product at APOS, it feels like my
old consulting and programming days are slipping away. I will use this
column to stay connected to those roots. Some of the tips will be my own,
but I am hoping for contributions from readers as well. If you have an
interesting tip, or have any comments or questions, please email: mytips@apos.com. I may publish the content of those emails from time to
time, so please let me know if you do not want it to be published or don't
want your name to be mentioned.
My first tip is dedicated to Nigel, who has been an APOS supporter and friend
for over a decade now, and to Donald who introduced us to Flex and has
also been a supporter and friend for many years. This tip is about including
Flash inside your Web Intelligence report. We started working with Flex a
few months ago to facilitate integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise and
other Flex supporting platforms. We used Flex to add a Flash based UI for
our Distribution Server to help users with scheduling. We have other
projects on the go and we are confident that Flex is going to make Flash
even more accessible as a UI in business situations. It gives a full client feel
and abilities to a thin client deployment. Including a Flash presentation
inside your Web Intelligence report can give another dimension to your
report. Some of our coming projects will use this technology as part of the
product.
June 2008 Sample
This sample will show how to include a Flash file inside a Web Intelligence report.
You can use the same process to include any web page and you can use it with Desktop
Intelligence documents as well.
Step 1 –
Place you content on your favorite web server or ask you administrator to do it for
you. You can create a departmental repository of web resources or use existing resources
on any web server you have permissions to use:
Make sure you know the URL to the resource. In this example the URL is http://boexi3/sample/sample.swf.
Step 2 – Create a Web Intelligence report.
Step 3 – Create a new variable in your Web Intelligence report.
This variable will let you embed the Flash file. You can control the width and height
for the frame that contains your Flash file. There are other properties you can
add that will control the border for the frame or its name if you would like to
refer to it from some script. Please refer to your favorite HTML manual for more
detail. We will add the folloing formula:
Step 4 – Use your variable in the report. Resize it and position
it as you like. On the properties tab under the display section make sure you change
the “read cell content as” property to HTML.
Step 5 – Save you report and view it using the HTML viewer. You
Flash file will show.
If you have an interesting tip, or have any comments or questions, please email:
mytips@apos.com.