RAD Enhanced Reporting Tool

Currently, applications within the Rheinmetall Air Defence corporation use a reporting library
for logging via network. Applications communicate their logs to a central workstation, where
logs are viewed and analysed. The core target of the new reporting tool developed during the
term project can be summarized as porting the old reporting tool to a modern, user-friendly
application, with new features like tabbed views and filtering capabilities. By requirement of
the industry partner, Qt 5.6 was used as the GUI framework. The programming language
was defined as C++11.
The project was realized in two major phases: first, reimplementing all features of the old
reporting tool and second, extending the application with the desired new features. During
the first phase, the aspect of performance and memory management received special focus,
as by requirement the tool needed to be capable of processing large amounts of logs,
arriving in short intervals and remain stable and responsive 24/7. The capabilities of the Qt
GUI framework in regards to those two aspects were researched thoroughly and the
solutions designed accordingly.
The new reporting application offers a modern, approachable tool, making previously
cumbersome tasks easier. It joins log handling under one parent application and offers more
control in log analysis. Before, in order to initialize analysing, two separate projects needed to
be started, one, the listening server application, two, the old reporting tool application, which
served more as a configurations manipulator. Furthermore, logs were displayed in simple
windows without any capabilities of searching or filtering. Limitations like these made log
analysis in the previous reporting tool cumbersome and confusing. Now, the two separate
initial steps have been integrated into one and thus made initializing log analysis more
convenient. As with the old reporting tool, the new application supports external configuration
for quick start-up or workspace arrangement. Gathering the parts under one roof application
provides more oversight and makes log analysis more comfortable.