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Advanced topics about Query Groups and Report Definitions
20 Define Custom Groups and Reports in Dell EMC OpenManage Enterprise
3.3 Best practices and guidelines
This section lists a few pitfalls that must be avoided when creating custom query groups and report
definitions.
3.3.1 Avoid conflicting conditions
This guideline applies to both Custom Query Groups and Report Definitions. It pertains primarily to the
Devices category.
The Selection Criteria page (used to set conditions for both Custom Query Groups and Report Definitions)
allows any conditions to be selected, which implies that conflicting conditions could be specified.
In most cases, all conditions should specify fields for only one type of device. A query that specifies conditions
about fields under headers for different device types—with an AND operator—will always result in no result
rows (because each device has only one device type—no device can satisfy conditions which pertain to more
than one device type). For example, if a query is for servers, all conditions must use fields under the set of
headers for servers (such as Server Device, Server Card, and Server Memory Device).
The exception to this guideline is if the different conditions are OR’ed together. That way, some devices can
satisfy conditions which require one device type and other devices can satisfy conditions which require a
different device type.
Conditions which use fields under headers for a specific device type can always be combined with conditions
which use fields under headers for general device data and alerts (since fields under those headers apply to
all device types).
Watch for other conflicts too. For example, if a condition is created on the Device Type field (under the Device
General Info header) for the device type to be “chassis” then any device type-specific conditions should all be
from fields under headers for chassis; otherwise, the query will have no result rows.
3.3.2 Avoid multiple multiples
This guideline applies to Report Definitions only. In the preceding diagrams, headings that contain a set of
fields which may occur multiple times per device are shown in blue boxes with white text. For example, a
Server may have multiple “Server Card” occurrences, multiple “Server Memory Device” occurrences, multiple
“Server Network Interface” occurrences, and so on. However, the set of fields under “Server Device” (which
has a single-line border) occur only once per server.
Note—When creating a report definition, it is recommended to select fields from at most one heading that can have
multiple occurrences (for both the Columns control and in the Filter). Else, the report may contain many more output
rows than are expected. That is because the report will have an output row for each first occurrence with each second
occurrence.
For example, consider a report that specifies the following two fields as output columns, each of which may
have multiple occurrences per device:
1. Field “Card Description”, from the “Server Card” heading.
2. Field “Memory Name”, from the “Server Memory Device” heading.
If a server has 12 cards and four memory devices, the report will have 48 output rows for that device
(because data from each card gets combined with data from each memory device). And, if that happened for
100 devices, the result would be 4,800 output rows.