HP ALM Quality Center Report Pack Installation Guide

The report installation consists of three major steps:

Setup a report server based on MS SQL Server Reporting Services (2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2014 or 2016).
Create a read-only database account on your HP ALM/QC database server.
Deploy our reports to the report server and point them to your HP ALM/QC database using credentials of the read-only database account.

After these steps the reports can be accessed using the web browser within your network. Use the Report Manager application to view/print/export reports, change the report default parameters, save snapshots, create email subscriptions, link reports, and manage security access. Read Report Manager overview.

Supported Configurations

These HP ALM Quality Center configurations are supported:

HP ALM QC Version	HP ALM QC Backing Database
	MS SQL						Oracle
	2005	2008	2008R2	2012	2014	2016	9i	10g	11g	12c
HP QC 9	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HP QC 10	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
HP ALM/QC 11	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes
HP ALM 11.5	Yes	N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes
HP ALM 12	N/A	N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes
HP ALM 12.5	N/A	N/A	N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes

Step 1: Install MS SQL Server Reporting Server (SSRS)

Setup a new MS SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). The reports need one of these versions: SSRS 2008, SSRS 2008 R2, SSRS 2012, SSRS 2014 or SSRS 2016. If you don't have licensed SSRS you may download the trial version of MS SQL Server for the report evaluation. Alternatively you may use the feature-limited "MS SQL Express Edition with Advanced Services" only if your HP QC backed by MS SQL Server database. The SSRS installation requirements can be found here.

During SSRS installation select the "Install the native mode default configuration" option. The 'Database Engine Services' and 'Reporting Services' are required; 'Management Tools' is recommended. See more details here.

HP ALM/QC Backed By MS SQL Server	HP ALM/QC Backed By Oracle database
No additional steps are required	Install Oracle Client on the report server

Verify your SSRS installation as recommended by Microsoft. The first step is successful if you are able to access the "Report Manager" (the SSRS web-application) using web-browser.

Step 2: Create Read-Only Account in HP ALM/QC Database

Create a read-only database account on your ALM/QC database server. The account will be used by SSRS report server. Consult with your database administrator before you do any changes on your production database.

HP ALM/QC Backed By MS SQL Server HP ALM/QC Backed By Oracle database

Create a read-only database account on the HP ALM/QC database MS SQL Server using MS SQL Management Studio. If your QC project created before QC 12 specify the 'Default Schema' as 'td' for each mapped HP QC project database. Open the Login Properties dialog and select 'User Mapping' page:

Select 'db_datareader' and 'public' roles on that page for a selected database.

When you do mapping between QC project databases and the database accoumt in SQL Management Studio the "Default Schema" must be properly specified for each QC database. Projects created using ALM 12 sometimes use 'dbo' schema but usually the 'td' schema is used.

Create a new Oracle database user.
Grant permissions to access ALM/QC project through the new user.

Here is the SQL to create the 'reporter' user and grant permissions. The password is 'reporter123' in the SQL, so change it to something more secure. Change the 'demo_db' to the name of your HP QC schema.

CREATE USER reporter IDENTIFIED BY reporter123; GRANT "CONNECT" TO reporter; ALTER USER demo_db GRANT CONNECT THROUGH reporter;

This step is successful if you have IP address (or hostname) of the ALM/QC database server, database account username/password, and database name of your QC project.

Step 3: Deploy Our Reports to SSRS with HP ALM/QC database credentials

Download reports from www.rbreporting.com, unarchive and deploy them to the report server. You may use the deploy.bat command included in the archive to deploy the reports to your report server.

Here is an example of using the deploy.bat by Administrator logged into SSRS Windows machine so the command can be used without specifying credentials as command line arguments. Only one argument provided to the command in this example. This creates a folder, data source and deploys the reports to the SSRS.

Open the Report Manager, select the HPQualityCenterDataSource, change the data source type, connection string, and specify credentials of the new database user.

HP ALM/QC Backed By MS SQL Server HP ALM/QC Backed By Oracle database

Connection string example:
Data Source=reporting;Initial Catalog=default_alm_demo_db

In the "user name" field specify both user names: read-only database user and the schema to access: reporter[your_hp_qc_project_schema]

Connection string example:
Data Source="(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=192.168.0.172)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=orcl)))"

Connection string if TNS is configured:
Data Source=oracle_tns_name

Use the SSRS Report Manager to view, print and manage the reports.

Tips and Notes

* With default SSRS installation the Report Manager can be accessed by using the URLs:
http://yourReportServerIpAddress/reports
http://yourReportServerIpAddress:8080/reports_SQLEXPRESS - for SSRS Express Edition

* The report deployment tool deploy.bat executed without arguments shows a little help:

Please let us know if you hit a report installation issue. Thank you!