Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher User's Guide Release 10.1.3.2.0 Part Number B40017-01 | ![]() Contents | ![]() Previous | ![]() Next |
BI Publisher's bursting feature enables you to generate
BI Publisher's bursting engine accepts a data stream and splits it based on multiple criteria, generates output based on a template, then delivers the individual documents through the delivery option of choice. The engine provides a flexible range of possibilities for document generation and delivery. Example implementations include:
Invoice generation and delivery based on customer-specific layouts and delivery preference
Financial reporting to generate a master report of all cost centers, bursting out individual cost center reports to the appropriate manager
Generation of payslips to all employees based on one extract and delivered via e-mail
More overview explaining that you will have at least two data sources - one being the main data set and the other being the delivery XML. The delivery XML is a SQL Query and requires a specific structure described below. *** why in the Invoice test with SQL main data source the Delivery XML is defined as a datasource, but it is not for the other examples?
Enabling a report for bursting consists of the following steps:
Prerequisite: A report defined in BI Publisher. The report must contain an element by which the report will be split and an element by which the report will be delivered.
Open the report in Edit mode.
Select Bursting under the report definition. This opens the Bursting Properties page.
Select the Enable Bursting box.
Select the Split By and Deliver By elements.
The Split By element is the data element from the report file that you wish to split the report by. For example, to split a batch of invoices by each invoice, you may use an element called INVOICE_ID.
The Deliver By element is the data element from the report file by which to determine the delivery method. In the invoice example, it is likely that each invoice will have its own delivery method, therefore the Deliver By element may be INVOICE_ID.
***Example of when the deliver by is different from split by****
Select the data source for the delivery XML.
The delivery XML can be sourced from the same data source as the main data set, or it can be generated from a different data source.
Enter the SQL query to build the delivery XML. See Defining the Delivery Data Source for details.
The delivery data set is used as a mapping table. It contains the delivery information for the row. It must be identical for each element grouped by. Therefore the group by (? split by) element is generally the Deliver By Element:
Delivery key
Template Name (TEMPLATE)
Template Format (TEMPLATE_FORMAT)
Locale (LOCALE)
Output Format (OUTPUT_FORMAT)
Delivery Method (DEL_CHANNEL)
Delivery parameters by channel
select distinct
INVOICE_ID KEY,
'INVOICE' TEMPLATE,
'RTF' TEMPLATE_FORMAT,
'en-US' LOCALE,
'PDF' OUTPUT_FORMAT,
'FILE' DEL_CHANNEL,
'/tmp' PARAMETER1,
INVOICE_ID||'.pdf' PARAMETER2
from APPS.AP_INVOICES_all
Channel | Parameter 1 | Parameter 2 | Parameter 3 | Parameter 4 | Parameter 5 |
Email address | Subject | Body | |||
Printer | Printer Group | Printer | Number of copies | Sides | Tray |
Fax | Fax server | Fax Number | |||
WEBDAV | Server | Path | User | Password | |
File System | Path | User | Password | ||
History | User |
This section describes how to call a BI Publisher report via a URL from another application, for example from a portal or from an Application Express application.
In the BI Publisher security model, reports are placed in folders and those folders are then secured to a role and a role assigned to a user. For a user to successfully access the report, you must ensure that the user is credentialed within BI Publisher to see it. There are two options for this:
Use the Guest folder
Enable the Guest folder via the Security Configuration tab of the Security Center page (for more information see Allowing Guest Access). Any report in this folder is open to all users to see and run. Use this option if the report does not contain sensitive data.
Use SSO
If both the calling application and BI Publisher are configured as partner applications in an SSO server, you can call any report via a URL and as long as the user has rights to see or run the report, then BI Publisher will render it without the need for the user to log in. For more information on setting up security options, see Defining a Security Model.
The basic URL for a report is as follows:
http://<server:port>/xmlpserver/<ReportDirectory>/<ReportName>.xdo
where
server:port - is the name of the server and port number where BI Publisher is running
xmlpserver - is a required string (the name of the application)
ReportDirectory - is the folder path to the report
Important: On the BI Publisher server, a report resides in a folder named for the report. For example, assume you have a report called Salary Report. On your BI Publisher desktop it is located in a folder of reports called Executive. Within Executive, it is located in a folder called Private. The path to this report would therefore be
Executive/Private/Salary+Report
Note that you must replace a space in the folder or report name with the + character.
ReportName.xdo - is the name of the report with the .xdo extension.
This will render the complete report inside the BI Publisher page with all the report controls. The default template, output and parameters will be used to render the report. For example:
http://xdopf.us.oracle.com:9999/xmlpserver/Executive/Salary+Report/Salary+Report.xdo
server:port - xdopf.us.oracle.com:9999
xmlpserver
ReportDirectory - Executive/Salary+Report
ReportName.xdo - Salary+Report.xdo
If you want to specify parameters for your output report, such as the template, the output format, and any parameters defined for the report, you can add name/value pairs to the URL. The easiest way to generate the URL is to use the Export function from the BI Publisher View Report page. The URL generated will look similar to the basic URL described above, but the name/value pairs will be added.
For example:
http://xdopf.us.oracle.com:9999/xmlpserver/Executive/Employee+Salary+Report/Employee+Salary+Report.xdo?_xpf=&_xpt=1&_xdo=%2FExecutive%2FEmployee+Salary+Report%2FEmployee+Salary+Report.xdo&dept=10&_xt=Standard&_xf=html
The URL components through the report name are described in the previous section. The URL after the report name consists of:
?_xpf=&_xpt=1&_xdo=%2FExecutive%2FEmployee+Salary+Report%2FEmployee+Salary+Report.xdo&dept=10=*&_xt=Standard&_xf=html
Note the following standard URL syntax:
? - denotes the first parameter
& - denotes each additional parameter
The BI Publisher parameters are as follows:
_xpf - required string for internal use
_xpt - defines whether to render the report in the full BI Publisher window (as above), or to render just the report document. Valid values are
0 - uses the BI Publisher window
1- renders just the document
_xdo - (optional) provides the path to the current report
dept - this is a parameter specific to the report as defined in the report definition. In this case the department for the data. Notice it takes the department ID. The parameter definition is to show the user the department name and then pass the ID to the query. You can have multiple parameters and their values in the URL.
_xt - this controls the template to be used. This is the template name, not the template file name. In this case, the template name is "Standard".
_xf - this controls the format of the output to be generated. Valid values are same as for the report: pdf, html, excel, rtf, or data.