Include report parameter in bursting output?

Andrew Dhabolt

Content

I'm using bursting to control the filename/delivery of a report run as a part of a flow. I'm not actually splitting the data up, so I'm just using the Split/Deliver Key as a static value included in the dataset (e.g. like how Marker is used in this example in the documentation). In the report DM, I have enabled output of the report parameters in the XML, and I do see them in the overall XML output.

One thing I've noticed is that as the bursting truly splits the XML all the way down to the group level that contains the bursting Deliver/Split, it actually drops all of the parameter XML elements as they sit at the top level of the report. In a normal template, I might typically output the parameters used to run the report in a header so that it's easy to see how the report was generated. However, as the params are being dropped from the XML in the bursting, it seems I can't do that in a simple way.

Is there some way I'm missing to ensure report parameters are still included in the bursting XML?

Alternatively, I could introduce a new column in the data set for each parameter and output that value in each result row. I'd at least now have access to my parameters, but that blows up that report with tons of extra data for each row now, so it's not ideal. If this is my only way to do this though, a follow up question: when creating an Excel template, is there some way to output just the first element in a collection?

Example: I include my report param as a static column 'ABC' in my dataset. In the header of my Excel template, above the report data, I'd like to output just the very first occurrence of 'ABC' (as the value is going to be the same for every single row; no need to repeat it). Is there some Xpath function or other way to do this?

EDIT: I was able to solve for the alternate scenario, grabbing only the first value, by relying on XPath, like:

<xsl:value-of select="DATA_DS/G_1[1]/MY_COL" /> ​

Still hoping there is just some way in Bursting to preserve the report params... Thanks for any feedback here.

Sandeep S. Chauhan-Oracle

Hi Andrew,

Yes, The xml files produced by the bursting do not contain the parameters.

Just by setting the Data Model property to include Parameter Tags will not cause the parameters to be included in every xml created by the bursting.

Bursting will create the xml files by splitting the data according to the Split By field. 

You have opted right approach, the parameters need to be included in the main sql query whose output will be split by this key field, so that they will appear in each bursting file.

Note: You can also try pulling the parameter values in separate group in data set apart from using XPATH/position.

BR,

Sandeep S. Chauhan