Validation of Folder names in BI Catalogue

Simon Scott

Description

When creating or amending filenames in BI validation on the name is performed to ensure that invalid characters are not included in the filename. If you ender a filename containing an invalid character  the following error message is displayed preventing use of the name:

Error - Invalid characters (~, !, #, $, %, ^, &, *, +, `, |, :, ", \, <, >, ?, ,, /)

This is not the case when it comes to folder names, invalid caharacters can be used in folder names which results in unexpected behaviour.

This Idea is to request that the validation applied to filenames in BI is extended to inclued folders to prevent the creation or renaming of folders that contain invalid characters.

Use Case and Business Need

Recently one of our client organisations created a folder containing a backslash (\) character the folder contained a report that was scheduled to run on a regular basis. When the scheduler tried to run the report, it failed to submit but repeatedly continued to try and schedule the report. This had the effect of attempting to submit the job 100's of times a second resulting in the BI servers becoming overloaded and restarting themselves.

The consequence of this was the loss of BI reporting for over 3 days while Oracle Support investigated and identified the cause of the problem.

Adding straight forward validation to folder naming to prevent invalid characters would prevent this scenario re-occuring.

The cost to our client organisations of losing the BI service is huge as they rely heavily on BI reporting for all aspects of the service from sending out purchase orders for essential, time critical supplies for frontline servcess to the production of invoices to customers for funds capture.

More details

It must not be possible to create an invalid folder name in BI especially when the consequences of doing so can have such a detrimental effect on the service.

Original Idea Number: 49123bcb73