Get path from catalog element, e.g. to be embedded in an agent

Christian Lex

Hello Oracle BI experts,

We have hundreds of agents where the path of the current location, a full path or a catalog element name is being added, e.g. into the attachment note under delivery content of an agent, example below.
Is there a way to use a variable or any other solution to dynamically add the path of the current location? This is to avoid that any path needs to be updated manually or via runcat replace.

Any idea is welcome.
Thank you,
Christian

Carter Beaton

Hi @Christian Lex. I don't see you example and what version of OBI are you running? And just to confirm, you mean an OBIEE "Classic" agent. Without the example I may be off base but try using a ./ in place of your server name. For Example. I you are using https://myobiee.com/analytics/path-to-where-ever. Try ./analytics/path-to-where-ever. This should pick up whatever server you are on and even allow you to migrate without having to modify the agent.

Christian Lex

OAS 8.2

Christian Lex

Just want to add the path, full path or catalog name dynamically.

Carter Beaton

@Christian Lex I believe that field is just a plain text field and you won't be able to get the catalog path dynamically.

Christian Lex

Thanks. Yes, instead of plan text I want to add a variable or so like @{full_path} or a function returning the path.

Gianni Ceresa

Historically in the catalog every path is a static absolute path.

No relative paths, no variables, no nothing.

I imagine your request is maybe related to your own catalog structure where you have the content used in the agent in a relative path to the agent (same or sub-folder).

In such situation a relative path, or a variable that let you build the path dynamically somehow, can have some benefits. Mostly when you move the agent somewhere else you wouldn't need to edit the agent definition.

But this benefit is a downside for many other cases.

Keeping it short: I never saw catalog path not being absolute everywhere there is a path (content added to dashboard pages, content of an agent etc.). I believe I did try once to manually edit the code of an object by adding a relative path, didn't work, but it was many years ago.

Christian Lex

I was just thinking about a (session) variable like webcatpath or similar, where the path being added during runtime so that the email includes the path where the agent is located, e.g. /shared/testing/myPath/myAgentName.

Gianni Ceresa

Ah, wait, I may have misread the question in the first place.

So, you are looking at using a variable in the "note" field, not that the content itself of the agent should be referenced with a variable, right?

That could have more chances in theory, but I'm not sure if the execution of the agent has a full session context available. The agent will impersonate the user configured to get the content, but the execution of the agent itself could maybe not have access to variables.

Never tried, could have some chances, but would need to test all the various syntaxes and functions to reference variables to see if one works.

Christian Lex

Yes, I am looking at using a variable in the "note" field. The path should be added during runtime when email is being sent, so that the email includes the full path to that agent, e.g. /shared/testing/myPath/myAgentName.