Scheduling and Managing Reports in Batch Mode

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Ownership

The Director of the Business Support Center is responsible for ensuring that this document is necessary, reflects actual practice, and supports University policy.

Section Objectives

At the end of this section, you should be able to:

Schedule reports in batch mode
Use the Scheduling Manager to manage reports in batch mode
Display the scheduled workbook status using the Scheduling Manager

Scheduling Reports

Scheduled reports are workbooks that are set to run at a specified time. You must have scheduling privileges to schedule reports. Scheduling privileges are not automatic, but are very easy to obtain. All you need to do is send an e-mail to odsadmin@virginia.edu and make your request. One of the advantages for scheduling is that you can schedule a report at night or over a weekend and when you return to work, the report will be available. You do not need to leave your computer “on” once the report has been scheduled.

A scheduled report runs on the server. A copy of the results of the scheduled report is saved in the database, so it is available the next time you log on to the database and start Discoverer. If you edit the original workbook in the meantime, the changes will have no effect on the scheduled workbook.

1. When a client schedules a workbook, the workbook details are sent to the server. You may rename the scheduled workbook.

2. After the workbook is executed at the scheduled time, a copy of the original workbook, along with the data, is saved in the database.

3. Once you have scheduled a report, you are the only person who can see it and its results.

Scheduling a Workbook

To schedule a workbook, do either of the following:

Select File—>Manage Workbooks—>Scheduling Manager.
Select File—>Schedule.

You also can schedule a query from the results window. If your query exceeds the length of time that a query can run, as set by you or your administrator, you will get a message with an option to reschedule the query.

1. To schedule a query, select File—>Schedule. The Schedule Workbook: Step 1 window is displayed.

2. Schedule one or several worksheets at the same time.

3. Select a time and date in the Time and Date fields.

Scheduling a Workbook (continued)

4. Select how many times you want to run the query.

Select Never if you want to run the query just once.
Enter a number in the “Repeat every” field indicating how many times the query should run.

5. Select a unit of time from the “Repeat every” drop-down list.

6. Click Next to advance to the next page.

7. When you click Next in the Schedule Workbook: Step 1 window, the Schedule Workbook: Step 2 window appears.

In the name field, specify a name for the workbook that you are scheduling.
In the Description field, enter a description for the workbook that you are scheduling.
Select the number of days you want to save the results of your query by selecting a number in the “Delete results automatically after” field.

Scheduling Manager

Select File—>Manage Workbooks—>Scheduling Manager. The Scheduling Manager window is displayed.

Click Edit to edit a scheduled workbook or a report. The Scheduled Workbook window is displayed.

Select the Schedule tab to change the scheduled time and frequency for repeating the query.
Select the General tab to change the name or description of the workbook.

Click Unschedule to unschedule a query. The Confirm Unschedule window is displayed.

You can select Unschedule but keep all the query results.
You can select Unschedule and delete all the query results.

Note: The Unschedule button is available only when you select a scheduled report. The button changes to Delete when you select a report that is completed.

Click Refresh to show the latest status in the “Schedule workbook” list.

Sorting in the Scheduling Manager

The report list in the Scheduling Manager window can be sorted based on any of the columns, such as Name, Status, Date, Time, and Run time. Click the column header that you want to use for sorting. An arrow appears on the header. Make the arrow point up or down according to the direction of the sort you want.

Opening a Scheduled Workbook

You can open a scheduled workbook in two ways:

1. Select File —>Open. In the Open Workbook dialog box, select Scheduling Manager and then click the Open button. In the Open Scheduled Workbook dialog box, select the desired workbook and then click the Open button.

2. Select File —>Manage Workbooks—>Scheduling Manager. In the Scheduling Manager window, select the workbook and click the Open button.

Scheduled Workbook Status

You can check the status of the scheduled report in the Scheduling Manager window. The status indicates whether the report is ready, expired, running, scheduled, or could not be scheduled. It also indicates whether an error occurred while running the query. An error can occur if the query is deleted by the administrator, the number of rows limit has exceeded, or the EUL has changed and you need to reschedule the report. The limit on the number of rows to be retrieved can be set by you or your administrator. The administrator sets the maximum number of scheduled reports and the time when the results of the query should expire.

Summary

In this lesson, you should have learned how to:

Schedule reports in batch mode
Use the Scheduling Manager to manage reports in batch mode
Display the scheduled workbook status using the Scheduling Manager
Effective: 07/18/02

Revision: 2

Copyright 2004 University of Virginia and Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

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