extracting data from reports

[Francis J. Lacoste]

On ven, 2003-05-09 at 09:17, Richard Crane wrote:
> I would like to extract selected data from Lire reports for trend 
> analysis and history.  Rather than having to parse the formatted 
> output, it seems like the way to go is use the XML intermediate form, 
> but I have no experience working with it.  Is there anything 
> pre-existing that can output some or all of the report in tabular/ 
> tab-delimited form?

Indeed processing the XML report is the way to go. 

There are currently no TAB and RETURN or CSV exporter. There is a XLS
exporter though (Excel95). You could use that output format to process
your data. Gnumeric, OpenOffice (and Excel) will be able to convert
that format to TAB and RETURN. But be aware the the Excel report also
contains description and other non-data stuff.

The easiest way to process the XML report is to use the
Lire::ReportParser API. You would probably want to use the 
Lire::ReportParser::RowColHandler module to see the data in table
order (rather than tree order).

Another possibility is to use the Lire::ReportParser::ReportBuilder
module which parse the XML report and build an in-memory Lire::Report
object. You can then use the Lire::Report API to manipulate the report. 

Using Lire::ReportParser vs Lire::Report is similar to the DOM vs SAX
model.

All these modules have their documentation in POD format:

perldoc Lire::ReportParser::RowColHandler or man
Lire::ReportParser::RowColHandler

Regards




Francis J. Lacoste

-- 
Francis J. Lacoste              . .           http://www.logreport.org
/^LogReport$/               . .               flacoste at logreport.org
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