Honoring non-persistent DM Defaults in BI Publisher scheduled report

Dennis Lovelady-25967

Summary

Honoring non-persistent DM Defaults in BI Publisher scheduled report

Content

When we schedule a BI Report, it seems that the CURRENT default values from the Data Model are propagated into the scheduled request.

Such that if we have, say, SUPPORT_PHONE value set to XXXX, that becomes part of the scheduled request, so the DM defaults are no longer referenced.

Because of this, if we later change the default of SUPPORT_PHONE to YYYY, the wrong value (XXXX) is output when the schedule fires to create the report.

This makes the purpose of the "default" parameter questionable, and requires rework in the event that parameter defaults change.  Which means that, for any report where the support phone has changed, the schedule for that report must be canceled, the DM changed, and the report re-scheduled.  Is that really right???

It would seem that the behavior should be that the report runs with the DEFAULTS FROM DATA MODEL AT EXECUTION TIME, not something that ages over time and does not reflect existing defaults.  That being the case, are we going about this the wrong way when we submit it?  Or if not, then is there a workaround?  Meaning, is there a way to cause the scheduler to not "notice" that there are parameters, at scheduling time?  Now, granted, there may be cases where we would want a value to persist (although I think I would not set a default for that in the first place).  But for us, at least, that would be the unusual exception.

Following on to that: What happens if we add a parameter - with its own default - to a report after that report is scheduled?  Would that parameter work as expected, while any "old" parameters would retain their older values?

Thanks,

Dennis