BI Bursting

Description:

A bursting definition is a component of the data model. After you have defined the data sets for the data model, you can set up one or more bursting definitions.

• One of the very good features of Oracle BI Publisher is its ability to burst and send the reports to multiple users simultaneously.

• Using BI Publisher’s bursting feature, we can split a single batch report into individual reports to be delivered to multiple destinations. We can apply a different template, output format, delivery method, and locale to each split segment of our report.

• Example implementations include:

1. 1. Invoice generation and delivery based on customer-specific layouts and delivery preference
   2. Financial reporting to generate a master report of all cost centers, bursting out individual cost center reports to the appropriate manager
   3. Generation of payslips to all employees based on one extract and delivered via e-mail

Enabling a Report for Bursting

• Prerequisite
  • A report defined in BI Publisher. The report data must contain an element by which the report will be split and an element by which the report will be delivered.
• Enabling a report for bursting consists of the following steps:
  • Open the report in Edit mode.
  • Select Bursting under the report definition.
  • Select the Enable Bursting checkbox.
  • 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 CUSTOMER_NAME.

• 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 delivery criteria determined by the customer; therefore, the Deliver By element may be CUSTOMER_ID.

• • 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 Set for details.
  • 

 

• Defining the Delivery Data Set
  • Based on the SQL query that we provide on the Bursting criteria page of the Report Editor, BI Publisher will build the delivery XML data set.
  • The delivery XML data set contains the information to deliver the burst report appropriately to each recipient. The delivery data in this XML document is used as a mapping table for each Deliver By element. The structure of the delivery XML is as follows:

 

• Where
  • KEY is the Delivery key and must match the Deliver By element. The bursting engine uses the key to link delivery criteria to a specific section of the burst data. TEMPLATE – is the name of the Layout template to apply. Note that the value is the Layout name (for example, “Invoice”), not the template file name (for example, invoice.rtf).

• • TEMPLATE_FORMAT – is the format of the layout template. Valid values are:
    • RTF
    • PDF
    • ETEXT
    • XLS_FO

• • LOCALE – is the template locale, for example, “en-US.”
  • OUTPUT_FORMAT – is the output format. Valid values are: for example: pdf, HTML, excel.
    • HTML
    • PDF
    • RTF
    • EXCEL

• • DEL_CHANNEL – is the delivery method. Valid values are:
    • EMAIL
    • FAX
    • FILE
    • FTP
    • PRINT
    • WEBDAV

• • Delivery parameters by channel. The delivery parameters by channel are defined in the following table:

• • Parameter Mapping

Summary:

Bursting is a process of splitting data into blocks, generating documents for each block, and delivering the documents to one or more destinations. The data for the report is generated by executing a query once and then splitting the data based on a “Key” value. For each block of the data, a separate document is generated and delivered.

Queries?

Do drop a note by writing us at doyen.ebiz@gmail.com or use the comment section below to ask your questions.