Design a Logi Report
The following topics introduce developers to the basic concepts involved in designing a typical Logi report:
Purpose and Prerequisites
As mentioned above, the purpose of this topic is to give developers who are new to Logi Analytics technology and "Elemental Development" an introduction to designing a Logi report.
Ideally, developers who are going to work with Logi products should have a good understanding of:
- HTML and XML
- CSS
- SQL (or whatever it takes to access the datasource they're working with)
- JavaScript
- "Stateless" web application concepts and web server technology
The Logi Server Engine, running at the web server, combines page definitions with data and returns the report as a complete web page to the requesting browser. The returned page consists of HTML, XHMTL, and JavaScript, which the browser processes and displays.
For a developer, understanding the potential, and limitations, of
these technologies is the key to a satisfactory development experience
with Logi products.
Standards? What Standards?
The HTML and browser paradigm was conceived with the idea of universal and generic presentation of information. Despite the efforts of international standards organizations, this lovely idea has morphed over time into something a bit different and sometimes it seems as if there are no standards. In reality, browsers vary by manufacturer and version in their presentation of web pages, providing a challenge for those developers whose target audience uses a variety of browsers.
Logi Info makes a serious effort to ensure that their page output is generic XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript, in order to promote cross-browser compatibility. However, there's no way to predict what changes the browser manufacturers will uncork with their next release, so developers shouldfrequentlytest their Logi apps against the range of browsers and browser versions that could be used to view their applications to ensure compatibility.
There are a number of online testing sites that make it easy to see what
your Logi app will look like in different browsers. Some, like
BrowserStack,
display images of your app in different browser, while others, like
Browserling, show
your app in a specific browser in an iFrame.
HTML5
The ever-evolving HMTL5 standard is another moving target for developers. Different browsers support different sets of HTML5 features, and sites like HTML5 Test that can help you discover the related capabilities of your specific browser make and version. Another useful site, Can I Use, indicates which HTML5 features are available in various browsers on an feature-by-feature basis. Logi Analytics is working to include more HTML5 features in our products with each release.