Dollar Universe 7.01.01 - Reporter

[Yves Degauquier]

Hi,

We are currently running Dollar Universe version 6 on our environment.

This year we plan to upgrade to 7.01.01, mainly we do not have any issue with that.

But Reporter which is now included in Explorer seems to be really different.

In the past all Reporter information were available into an Oracle database allowing us to perform queries.

In the version 7 I do not see any usage of database, is that true?

Thanks for your informations.

Kind regards,

Yves

[Domenico Cotugno]

Hi Yves,

I can give a little context and history to this topic. First a little history.

Dollar Universe releases are categorized into three types: 1) Major release (5.x, 6.x, 7.x); 2) Minor release (6.8, 6.9, 6.10, etc.); and Fix release (6.10.101, 6.10.111, etc.). 

Fix releases generally only contain corrections to bugs (sometimes platform compatibility, like a new version of Windows).

Minor releases are considered feature releases, as they contain one or more new features. For example, the main new feature to be added to version 7.01 as compared to 7.00 is Remote Non-Simultaneity conditions.

Major releases see a shift in architecture. From version 5.x to version 6.x, this was the centralized administration via UniViewer Management Server (UVMS). In version 7.x, the main architectural change is for Reporter. 

Reporter v6 is a mostly "pull"-based model (scheduled extractions of execution data) with static data accessible stored in Oracle or MS SQL DBs and visible via UVC and PDF reports shared via email.

Reporter v7 is now integrated in the entirely web-based interface of Explorer; its data is "push"-based with near-realtime information (usually, a maximum of 2 minutes delay), no longer requiring scheduled extractions; and the Dashboards contain reports that are dynamic, user-customizable and accessible by users outside of UVC. It also stores its data in a different type of database: ElasticSearchDB (as opposed to Oracle and MS SQL for v6). 

With all this said, Dollar Universe is generally very good with backwards compatibility (we have customers running schedules using logic from v4 or even earlier!). So, Reporter v6.10 (from version 6.10.101, but 6.10.121 recommended) will continue to work to extract data from nodes in version 7.0 and 7.01 and store this data in the same Oracle or MS SQL databases with the same DB schemas as have historically been used. So you can continue to perform the same queries to your Oracle databases as you do today.

Version 6.10 will be in end of support as of May 2026. But that does not mean the end of your data stored in MS SQL or Oracle, if you wish to continue to query this data. Before the end of support date for 6.10, the Dollar Universe development teams will deliver a sort of "Reporter-collector" tool that will allow data to continue to be extracted from nodes in v7 and beyond. This tool will be modernized and will allow for connection to newer version of MS SQL and Oracle, using TLS-capable connections. However, the tool will only allow for extraction of data from the nodes; all the canned PDF Reports and email functionality will be deprecated in favour of the new, web-based Reporter interface. The Reporter-collector tool should be available by the end of calendar year 2025. 

If you speak French, I can recommend you attend the next Dollar Universe User Club meeting co-sponsored by Broadcom and Tricise that is to take place virtually in June 2025. There, you can discuss directly with the Dollar Universe Product Manager as well as the large community of Dollar Universe users. If you do not speak French, there are periodic roadmap presentations that take place in English, as well. You will usually find announcements for those presentations on the community here.

I apologize for the lengthy post, but I hope I have answered your question fully. If not, please let me know!

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Domenico Cotugno
Tricise Automation
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[avensis david]

Hi, thanks for your message, it helps me a lot.

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[Neil Rogers]

Hi Domenico, It's good to hear that the 6.10 collector will be modernised, as this is what we use in our estate. We did try switching to elasticsearch however it was raised that there is specific functionality missing - we use reporter to produce reports on our failed and reran jobs and this capability was missing which we also use for our annual audits. It was good news when we were told that we could stay on reporter 6.10.102 and continue to use it with our V7 estate.  I'm sharing this info as I would request that this capability be added in before deprecating the old version of reporter. 

[Yves Degauquier]

Hi Domenico,

thanks for all the information.

I have a big interest into participating to Dollar Universe User Club meeting (I'm french speaking), is there already some information about it?

Thanks,

Yves

[Domenico Cotugno]

Hello @Yves Degauquier,

I've sent you a private message via the Community messaging. All that is required is your email address to be added to the User Club meeting. 

Regards,

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Domenico Cotugno
Tricise Automation
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[Ryan Zerbe]

I'm working on testing v7 now and saw the lack of Reporter too, glad to know its still going to be somewhat supported. We've never used any canned reports and I created an SSIS package to pull data from the Reporter database to Excel, so the collector is really all my teams needs anyway.

I am stuck on one piece though. We typically dont used valid certs on our MSSQL instances, just the self-signed ones it generates. There does not seem to be any option for the reporter db connection to trust the cert or any connection string options. Since sqljdbc v10.2, the default is to encrypt, so I need that option in the Reporter db connection or I'm stuck using sqljdbc 9.4.1.

[Domenico Cotugno]

Hello Ryan,

Indeed, the Dollar Universe Product Manager found in speaking to customers that the most important function of the current Reporter was centralized data collection and storage into a standard database. This is why the data collection will be maintained in future versions, but not the actual Reports which are better served in Dollar Universe Explorer (with Web Reporter).

With respect to the TLS requirement, work has already been completed in version 7.01 to allow for TLS-secured DB connection for the UVMS DB. This work will be ported to the "Reporter-collector" later this year. For the time being, since Reporter 6.10 is in "support only" status, this compatibility will not be added. So you are correct that, for the time being, you are limited to JDCB v9.4.1 which still allows non-TLS connections. 

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Domenico Cotugno
Tricise Automation
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[Ryan Zerbe]

Thanks for the quick response. I will stop looking for that setting then and use sqljdbc 9.4.1. Cheers.

[Domenico Cotugno]

Glad to be of service.

Here is some additional information from the official Broadcom KnowledgeBase:

JDBC drivers 10.2 11.2 from Microsoft SQL Server 2017/2019 are not compatible with UVMS or Reporter

Cheers!

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Domenico Cotugno
Tricise Automation
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