This is a guest post by my colleague Subramanya Pilar from the RPE FVT team.
Similar articles are available for RQM at https://jazz.net/library/article/1137, DM https://rpeactual.com/2015/10/08/easy-selection-of-the-report-starting-point-a-rhapsody-example/ and QM again https://rpeactual.com/2014/08/18/rpe-configuration-layer-or-docgen-configuration-made-simple/
The example template associated with this article, rtcWorkitemHistoryWithMetadata.dta, is available in the RPE Community Template Library.
Rational Publishing Engine provides functionality to configure data source metadata so that when RPE report is consumed by point product, it can understand how to configure the data sources. This capability enables report designers to provide users with a list of options to choose from, instead of manually entering the URI. Below are the steps to configure a template’s metadata so that RPE template can be executed from within Rational Team Concert.
Template Configuration Metadata
Open the template in RPE Studio. In Outline view, right click on the data source that needs to be configured and select “Edit Configuration Metadata”. Usually, this data source is the parent data source which is not dynamically configured and the name does not start with “_”.
There are 4 fields in “Edit Configuration Metadata…” window.
- “Request URL” – the URL that RPE will request the data to show to the user. There are pre-defined variables that can be used in this field that RTC will recognize. You cannot use these values if configuring the report from standalone RPE.
- $public: Public URL of the server
- $projectAreaUUID: RTC project area.
- “Type” restricts the format of user input.
- “Identifier”- XPath expression that selects the data RPE/RTC will use to configure the report. The values of this attribute must be Reportable REST URLs .
- “Display” – XPath expression that selects the data RPE/RTC will show the user.
NOTE: you can drag and drop attribute from Data Source View into the identifier and display fields.
How does RPE uses these values
If ‘Request URL’ isn’t set, then user has to manually input the data source value when executing the report. If ‘Request URL’ is set, and ‘Identifier’ field is not set, the resolved value of ‘Request URL’ will be used for report generation.
If both ‘Request URL’ and ‘Identifier’ fields are set, a GET request to the resolved Request URL is made, then ‘Identifier’ and ‘Display’ XPath expressions are evaluated on the server response and a list is shown to user to choose from. The values matching ‘Display’ expression are shown in the list and the corresponding value of ‘Identifier’ is set as data source URI.

In this example the user is provided with a list showing the id and summary for all the workItems . Once user selects a workItem the reportable URL of the chosen WorkItem is used to configure the document generation.
NOTE: for RTC the @href attribute cannot be used in Identifier field because the URL it holds is not a Reportable REST URL.