What CRMS is

What this is about

CRMS stands for CodamAI Reporting Management System. It produces reports: PDF, HTML, Word files and spreadsheets. A report is always made of two parts:

the template: it defines what the report looks like. It is written in FreeMarker, a template language with placeholders like ${customer.name}.
the payload: the data for exactly this one report, for example the customer, the date and the items of an audit.

CRMS puts the payload into the template and returns the finished document.

A report is created

1

User→Client
clicks "Create report"
2

Client→CDMS
reads the data that belongs in the report and prepares it
3

Client→CRMS
sends a render request: template key, format, mode and payload
4

CRMS→CIAS
asks who is calling and in which tenant
5

CRMS
looks up the published revision of the template that applies to this person
6

CRMS
checks the payload before the template sees it
7

CRMS
Payload breaks the rules → 422 with every violation
8

CRMS
inserts the payload in a sealed-off environment and produces the format
9

CRMS→File storage
stores a final document encrypted, only in mode FINAL
10

CRMS→Client
returns the document

Result: The bytes of the document, plus key, scope, language, revision and hash of the template it came from

Every document says which revision of the template it comes from. A revision is a fixed state of the template that can no longer be changed. This way you can prove later which text a report was produced with.

What CRMS does and what it does not

The tasks of CRMS

CRMS does

templates and documents

manages templates with language variants and revisions
releases templates through an approval chain
checks the payload
renders PDF, HTML, DOCX, XLSX, CSV and ODS
stores final documents in a hash chain
verifies them and keeps them until their retention ends

CRMS does not

that stays with the application

reads no business data, not from CDMS either
changes no business data
does not calculate: no sums, no formulas
does not decide when a report is created
manages no users and roles, CIAS does that

Why the application prepares the data

A template is written in the running system, by people with a template role. That is why it may do nothing but insert values:

No access to Java. The template cannot create classes and cannot call methods. FreeMarker built-ins like ?new and ?api are switched off.
Only prepared values in the payload: text, numbers, booleans, date and point in time, plus lists and objects of these. An arbitrary Java object is refused, because it would hand the template its methods.
At most two levels deep: title, customer.name, items[].amount. Whatever the template needs, the application prepares flat.
No files from outside. Images, fonts and style sheets only come from the template itself (asset:<name>) or from the request (attachment:<name>). Every other address is refused before it is called.
No formulas. A spreadsheet also holds only finished values. A formula assembled from a payload value would be a way in for attackers.

How the payload is checked exactly is described in The payload check.

Three modes

Every render request names a mode. It decides whether the document is stored.

	PREVIEW	FINAL	TRANSIENT
stored	never	yes, as the next revision of its document chain	never
marker	visible watermark and marker `crms-preview`	none, it is the original	only the marker `crms-transient` in the metadata
what for	check what a report looks like	the report that counts	a copy to download, only from system templates

The details are described in Preview, final, transient.