Export a WRS Report as a PDF File via Batch

[Criptic]

Hello Everybody,

let me first describe my situation: I have a report in WRS that is updated on a weekly basis and I need to distribute it as a PDF to our intranet.

A possible solution of course is to recreate the report in SAS coding and create my own PDF but before I sink time into that I wanted to ask if there is a possibility by using the functionalities that SAS already provides.

I came across this Processing Reports outside of SAS Web Report Studio after some searching. So I build myself the following command (I'm on AIX 7.1, SAS 9.4M2, WRS 4.4):

/sas/sasV9.4_prod/Config/Lev3/ReportBatch/rptbatch.sh --batch --spring-xml-file file:/sas/sasV9.4_prod/Config/Lev3/Applications/SASBIReportServices4.4/spring.xml --username XXX --password XXXXXX --repository Foundation --source "A5441WV5.AY00II9K"

Log in CommandLine:

Reading options from command line.
Validating options.
Starting platform services.
Logging in as user: sas_adm
Generating output...
WARN [main] 2018-04-16 08:54:27,412 [unknown:unknown] com.sas.report.render.view.pdf.itext.font.F
ontMapper - Font "Arial" is not installed.
WARN [main] 2018-04-16 08:55:02,473 [unknown:unknown] com.sas.report.output.management.batch.BatchDriver - Batch generation succeeded for Report: SBIP://METASERVER/Reports/Berichtsforum/Kraftfahrt/K_Segmente.srx(Report).
Done.

Content of Log-File:

WARN [main] 2018-04-16 08:54:27,412 [unknown:unknown] com.sas.report.render.view.pdf.itext.font.FontMapper - Font "Arial" is not installed.
WARN [main] 2018-04-16 08:55:02,473 [unknown:unknown] com.sas.report.output.management.batch.BatchDriver - Batch generation succeeded for Report: SBIP://METASERVER/Reports/Berichtsforum/Kraftfahrt/K_Segmente.srx(Report).

And now I have two questions:

1. Can I ignore these warnings?
2. Was a PDF generated and if so where is it?

I hope you can help me

Kind regards

Criptic

[Madelyn_SAS]

I believe the PDF is stored in the SAS Content Server. I don't think there is an easy way to retrieve it.

If all you need to do is get a PDF so that you can post it to your internet, I think it would be easier to just use Web Report Studio to distribute the report to yourself. If you need to use a command line, then you can distribute via command line as well. The information is in the same instructions that you found: Processing Reports outside of SAS Web Report Studio

[Criptic]

@Madelyn_SAS thank you for your reply.

I only need to get the PDF but I need to do that on a weekly basis and distribute it to a folder where another application uploads it to the intranet.

I know that I could schedule that distribution via WRS but I can only send it via E-Mail and then I would still have to manually copy the PDF to the directory and I want to avoid doing that if possible.

Could you help me with the instruction for the cl please?

In batch mode it looks like you said the PDF gets stored in the SAS Content Server, so too me it looks like I need to use the burst or extract option.

Using burst I get the following Error:

ERROR [main] 2018-04-18 08:15:31,827 [unknown:unknown] com.sas.report.output.management.ErrorReporter - An error occurred: The report /Reports/Berichtsforum/Kraftfahrt/K_Segmente.srx has no associated burst definition.
com.sas.report.output.management.OutputManagementException: The report /Reports/Berichtsforum/Kraftfahrt/K_Segmente.srx has no associated burst definition.
at com.sas.report.output.management.DefaultOutputDriverFactory.getUnambiguousBurstDefinitionFromReport(DefaultOutputDriverFactory.java:305)
at com.sas.report.output.management.BurstOutputInformationGenerator.generate(BurstOutputInformationGenerator.java:31)
at com.sas.report.output.management.OutputGenerator.generateOutput(OutputGenerator.java:284)
at com.sas.report.output.management.OutputGenerator.run(OutputGenerator.java:243)
at com.sas.report.output.management.OutputGenerator.run(OutputGenerator.java:377)
at com.sas.report.output.management.OutputGenerator.main(OutputGenerator.java:413)

How do I add a burst definition to a report?

Using extract it requires a prompt file - How do I create such a file?

And for both modes I have the question how I direct the output to where I want it to go?

[Madelyn_SAS · Accepted solution]

I'm sorry but you will not be able to use either of the command line options to create and then store a PDF in a file system location somewhere. The burst command is specifically for sending a PDF to a recipient list via email or to a publication channel. You cannot instead send the PDF to a folder.

I also discussed this with a co-worker. We think your options are:

• Open the report in Web Report Studio, select File > Print, and manually copy the PDF to a folder location.
• Distribute the report to yourself as a PDF and then manually copy the PDF to a folder location.
• Open the report in Microsoft Word, and select File > Save As > PDF, and then manually copy the PDF to a folder location.  (This option  assumes that you have SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office available.)

[Criptic]

Well that is not the answer I have hoped for but you can't have everything in life I guess 😄
Thank you a lot for the time and effort, I will just use the distribution feature in WRS.

[ccaulkins912]

As you said, @Criptic, just WRS is not going to be maintained much longer (!) -
so if you're interested in changing this to a Viya and/or Visual Analytics discussion, I'm sure you'll find some creativity flowing towards many a different solution.

@For example, in a slightly unrelated post from Ahmed_alAttar, there's mention of <href=https://sassoftware.github.io/saspy/install.html> which is a module that can be used in Viya and SAS Studio to create custom features using Python.

[Criptic]

@ccaulkins912 do you have any offical information for that - that would be really usefull for me. Like a SAS note or an annoucment?

[ccaulkins912]

https://communities.sas.com/t5/Base-SAS-Programming/Connect-SASPY-to-remote-SAS-host/m-p/472093