2. Sample SQLite Connection

With that preamble in the previous topic, the rest of these sections should start to sink in easier. In this main SQLite stack of dashboards, every single Print Management customer receives a demo SQLite database.

This database is filled with anonymised real-life data. We’ve limited it to two years of activity, with around 10 records per day.

It’s more than enough data to demo with and it’s very lightweight (roughly 5 MB).

This SQLite Connection can be viewed via our UI under the Connection Builder. It’s effectively a pointer to that SQLite file, and then the datafeeds then retrieve data from that Connection.

The SQLite Connection is also a bit different to the rest of the integrations. Where other Print Management Connections have their own configurable Views via the UI, the View of the SQLite database is held in the file itself. This is due to the main reason behind this demo database, and that it’s just for displaying demo data. Should you wish to access this View, you would need to download an external tool for opening this database. If you would like some recommendations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Support team. We do not maintain our own database tools, so please consult your own internal IT teams before installing any third-party tools.

Should you open the SQLite View, you will notice it’s a very easy SQL View to read. The demo database mostly has the same structure as the View, so by in large, it’s effectively selecting all the data from the tables.

The View also is the area where customers perform all of the main data customisations. It’s where we join different sources, it where we select time periods e.g. the last 730 days and how we can purge data after a certain duration of time (just visually!) as the original data will still be in the database.

Towards the top of the View, there are some key elements which the components and dashboards utilise the most. These are listed below, with a general description of what may best fill out these data points:

1. User
   1. The users’ name who has performed that job
2. Cost_Centre
   1. A Departmental grouping of users. E.g. Account Names, Project Names, Cost Codes
3. Device_Name
   1. The name of the device performing the print-related activities
4. Device_UUID
   1. A unique identifier for the device performing the print-related activities e.g. Serial Numbers or Equipment ID’s
5. Device_Group
   1. A grouping of more than one device. E.g. Models, Manufacturers, Offices
6. Location
   1. A flexible Location based field. Such as Offices, Locations, Sub-Cost Centres

Lastly, the Connection is also where we control the Schedules. Previous versions of the software would have put that functionality in each individual datafeed. Now, we have put that in the Connection and the associated Datafeeds refresh when the Connection refreshes. That means one area for you to change, should you wish to alter data load times.

A key piece of advice is that the Print Management connection should never be deleted.

That all being said, the View presents the data in the format that we intend it to. After this, the Datafeeds can start to pull their data through.

Next Module - Datafeed Design