Running LDMS's Built-in Reports

LDMS comes with many reports. To run a report, simply select a category on the left, the name of the report on the right, and then click the button from the LDMS toolbar. After a short time (depending on the size of the report), a Crystal Reports® viewer window will appear.

Note:

While there are many built-in reports, they may not meet everyone's needs. You can also use the Data Retrieval Tool to create your own custom reports.

When you attempt to run a report without criteria, LDMS will give you a message that the report may take a long time to generate. You'll always receive this message if you don't select any criteria, even if the report you're about to generate won't be very big.

You can reduce the amount of information in your report by creating query criteria to filter it. For example, a filter of Specimen Date >= 24/Apr/2013 would only include records where the specimen date is on or after April 24, 2013 in your report.

Figure: Report generation screen



Creating a report query criteria:

  1. Select the field that you want to filter from the Field drop-down.

  2. Select the operator for your filter from the Operator drop-down.

    Note:

    LDMS using the Pascal-like <> to indicate ≠ (not equal).

  3. Enter a value for your filter.

  4. Click the button.

  5. Add more query criteria.

  6. Enter a query statement, using the numbers assigned to each query criteria. If no query statement is entered, the default is to use each query criteria separated by AND.

  7. To save your query for later use, enter a name into the Previous Queries text box, then click the button from the LDMS tool bar.

Table 1. Example query statement. In this example, a query statement of (1 or 2) and 3 would find results where the ACTG Protocol is 003 OR 218, and the Specimen Date is after April 24, 2013.
# Field Operator Value
1 ACTG Protocol = 003
2 ACTG Protocol = 218
3 Specimen Date > 24/Apr/2013

If you choose to save your query for future use, you can select individual query criteria and modify or delete them using the and buttons respectively. Saving a report query is helpful if you need to run the same report on a regular basis.