Oracle Warehouse Builder OWB R2 Process Flows

I recently was contacted by one of my former clients that had a pretty good question. I actually had this questions asked a few times by various parties, so here is a summery and an answer!

"Quick OWB question for you: Is it possible to execute process flows from outside of OWB once they have been created. Wondering if there is a template provided by oracle(like “Sql_exec_template for OWB mappings) to execute Process flows…"

Well, OWB does contain a pl/sql package called WB_RT_API_EXEC with a function inside it called RUN_TASK that submits execution requests to the OWB runtime engine. The requests could be for mappings, process flows or scheduled jobs. The function spec looks like:

function run_task

( p_location_name in varchar2
, p_task_type in varchar2
, p_task_name in varchar2
, p_custom_params in varchar2 default null
, p_system_params in varchar2 default null
, p_oem_friendly in number default 0
, p_background in number default 0
) return number;

This is actually the same function used by the sqlplus_exec_template.sql script in OWB 10gR2 that you mentioned in your email. It can be called using (assuming a repository owner connection exists):

(this is an example…)

declare
result_num number;
begin
result_num:= wb_rt_api_exec.run_task('PFMOD_LOCATION1', 'PROCESS', 'MY_PKG/MY_PF', ',', ',', 0 ,0);
end;

The full documentation of the function can be found in /owb/rtasst/wb_rt_api_exec.pl

As usual, if you have further good questions never hesitate to checkout Oracle OWB Blog and Oracle Technology OWB Forum .

Google Analytics

OK, people know that I like Business Intelligence and BI in general. But I am seriously blown away with how nice Google Analytics is. The tool simply rocks. Even non-techies can use this tool on their websites. And when it comes to consulting with this tool for clients....hahah evil laugh) I am only getting started.

Go have a look yourself to see how amazing this tool is: google analytics

Oracle Virtual Machines @ the Oracle Virtualization Technology Center

Wow. I like it. I am downloading this now and will report my findings.
Check it out at Oracle's OTN site: link
Also see a compelling article here about why VMWare is 'good' for your Oracle DB: click here!

Fantasy Football 2007

I say its fine every now and then to blog about something that is not technical in nature or that exclusively deals with Oracle. After all, I am looking at data, databases, security, apps, frameworks, and other stuff that fries my eyes during the day.....so why not talk about this stuff at night?

My Fantasy Football Team sucks. Part of this is on me and my drafting. MOST of it is on my team.
With a great Running back draft for me, I have brandon Jacobs (NY Giants), Larry Johnson (KC), and Rudi Johnson (Cincinnati). ALL of them were hurt for multiple games this season. None have been great. They have had games here and there. NO consistency.

I had 2 top tier Wide Receivers in Lee Evans and Larry Fitzgerald. Lee Evans caught less footballs than I have eyeballs in his first 2 games. That's not good. It took Fitz quite a while to realize he was supposed to be catching balls too.

My QB? Philip Rivers. Cry me a river, you bastard. I luckily took the Cleveland QB -Derek Anderson- and he is playing well! My Cowbody 'D' is performing relatively well too.

My Tight end (always a hard drafting choice outside of Antonio Gates) was Vernon Davis of SF. He had high hopes this season. Me too. I think he has played..?! Anyone seen him lately? IS he out there? Are ANY 49ers out there??

SAD thing is with all the injuries and crappy play by my crappy team, I might make the playoffs.
Who is our #1 guy in the league? he has Brady, Moss, Patriot's 'D', Adrian Peterson, Braylon Edwards, Hines Ward, just to name a few....LOL. Rediculous.

I'm out.

Oracle BI Publisher Tips

I know I have a fair amount of BI Publisher posts here, and I will continue tp update old ones too. However I figured I would mention a few gotchas and little tips here that have confused me sometimes and I know confused the heck out of clients and some smart colleagues I've worked with as well. I'll be updating this post here and there.

XML Nodes and comparing tags in different nesting levels:
coming soon.

The dreaded copy paste... a binding problem?:
Do not, under almost any circumstance copy-paste things inside your microsoft word BI Publisher RTF template. Pay special attention to form fields and XSL code. I have copy-pasted these form time to time from one place in my code to another and it failed to work. But wait! You might be thinking I pasted the elements into parts of a template that SHOULD work differently because of other tags involved, such as posting something outside of an if/else statement, or pasting something outside of the body tags, and so forth. NOPE! It happened to me multiple times if I merely pasted the code or form field right next to the original! It would not render!

Pay attention if your output data behaves or displays differently after a copy-paste. Simply TYPE what you want to alleviate this problem :)