Copy a Data Source

To create a new data source by copying an existing data source, editing it if required, select the Copy option of the Data Source Wizard.

The Copy Data Source page of the wizard is then displayed:

The existing data sources are listed. Data sources may come from three sources.

Element

Element Views are created automatically by the system. One element view is created for every base element type. Selecting an element view is an easy way to include data from one type of element in a report.

Project

Project Views are stored in a Lexicon dictionary database. A user must have read access to the Lexicon database to see Project Views. Project Views may contain more complex data, and will be set up by an administrator. A set of sample project views are include in the sample project.

User

User views may be copies of Project or Element views, or maybe data sources users have created and stored locally.

Whichever view is chosen to use for a report a copy of it is taken. The original view is left as it is. Write access to important project resources such as the Lexicon dictionary database is therefore not required.

The views shown may be filtered based on the type of the owning database of the elements in the view.

View sets are a way of grouping views together. Currently from the data source Wizard this is used purely to help the administrator to group logically related views together, for ease of distribution and use. However, in later releases it will be possible to build relationships between single views in one view set, in the same way that tables are related in a relational database. When the view set is selected for use in a report these relationships will be resolved and the results presented for use in Reporting as a Report data source.

Select the data source to be copied and click Next.

The subsequent steps of the wizard are the same those of the New option, as described above, but with the details of the selected data source populating the wizard so that they can be edited if required. See Define a New Data Source for further information.