Bursting (Email report output) in XML Publisher reports

XML Bursting is a feature available in Oracle by which a XML is exploded into different parts based on a defined logic and the individual parts are again converted into reports based on a layout and sent via email to designated mailboxes.
This is a very helpful feature especially if you are trying to send the output of a report to an email address or multiple email address
Benefits of XML bursting

1. The feature is standard for XML Publisher version 5.6.3
2. No coding is required
3. Output is sent via email. User does not need to login to Oracle to get the report
4. The main report template and the bursting templates can be different from each other. Thus there can be one output from the concurrent program and a different layout to send as email.

Demonstration of XML bursting

We created a XML Publisher report with using a data template. The report has been developed to return 4 records. We shall use bursting to send the 4 records as 4 different reports to 4 email addresses. For our example we have used 1 email address across all 4.

XML Data Template
The data template is given below,

01	<?<span class="hiddenSpellError">xml</span> version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

02	<!-- $Header: XX-EMP_DET.xml 115.0 2012/03/15 08:04:42 <span class="hiddenSpellError" pre="42 ">xdouser</span> noship $ -->

03	<!-- <span class="hiddenSpellError" pre="">dbdrv</span>: none -->

04	<dataTemplate name="XXEMPDET" description="Employee Details" version="1.0">

05	<parameters></parameters>

06	<lexicals></lexicals>

07	<dataQuery>

08	<sqlStatement name="Q1">

09

<![<span class="hiddenSpellError">CDATA</span>[select employee_number, full_name, 'eyaray@etihad.ae' email_address, pp.namefrom per_people_x ppx, per_assignments_x pax, per_positions ppwhere pax.person_id = ppx.person_idand pax.position_id = pp.position_idand ppx.current_employee_flag = 'Y'and rownum < 5]]>

10	</sqlStatement>

11	</dataQuery>

12	<dataStructure>

13	<group name="G_EMP" dataType="VARCHAR2" source="Q1">

14	<element name="EmpNo" dataType="VARCHAR2" value="employee_number"/>

15	<element name="Employee_Name" dataType="VARCHAR2" value="full_name"/>

16	<element name="Email" dataType="VARCHAR2" value="email_address"/>

17	<element name="Position" dataType="VARCHAR2" value="name"/>

18

</group>

19	</dataStructure>

20	</dataTemplate>

Create the concurrent program

Concurrent program registration

Register the data definition
Responsibility: XML Publisher Administrator
Navigation: Data Definition

Register data definition

Attach the concurrent program to the request group and execute the program to generate the XML output.

Concurrent request

The output shows the following,

Create the layout template

Report layout template

Attach the XML as Preview Data
Responsibility: XML Publisher Administrator
Navigation: Data Definition
Query for Code = XXEMPDET
Attach the XML generated from the program output to the Preview Data section of the data definition.

Attach XML as Preview data

Register the template
Navigation: Templates
Create a template

Register layout template

Check Preview to see if the template matches with the XML.

Execute the report to view the data

XML report output

There are 4 records for 4 employees in the report. We are displaying 2 employees for ease.
Create the bursting template
The most important aspect of XML bursting is the bursting control file. This is a XML file which contains specific tags for bursting the XML output generated earlier.

01	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

02	<xapi:requestset xmlns:xapi="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/xapi" type="bursting">

03	<xapi:globalData location="stream">

04	xapi:globalData >

05	<xapi:request select="/XXEMPDET/LIST_G_EMP/G_EMP">

06	<xapi:delivery>

07	<xapi:email id="123" server="eymail.etihad.local" port="25" from="applprod@eyepdbe1.etihad.local" reply-to ="applprod@eyepdbe1.etihad.local">

08	<xapi:message id="123" to="${EMAIL}" attachment="true" content-type="html/text" subject="Employee details for Empno ${EMPNO}">

09	Dear ${EMPLOYEE_NAME},

10

11	Please find your details attached.

12

13	Regards,HR team

14	xapi:message>

15	xapi:email>

16	xapi:delivery>

17	<xapi:document key="${EMPNO}" output="${EMPNO}.pdf" output-type="pdf" delivery="123">

18	<xapi:template type="rtf" location="/tmp/XXEMPDET.rtf">

19	xapi:template>

20	xapi:document>

21	xapi:request>

22	xapi:requestset>

Explanation of the bursting template

XML tag	Explanation
xapi:request select=	This tag in the control file indicates from which tag/node in the concurrent program output XML should separated for bursting
xapi:delivery	This node contains all email related attributes
xapi:email	This tag contains the email attributes like, server or the email server IP or name port or the email server port from or the email address from which the server should send the email reply-to or the email address to which the replies should be sent
xapi:message	This tag contains the attributes about the email like, To or the email address where the email should be sent Subject or the email subject attachment , i.e. if the email should contain an attachment content-type or type of email The mail body will be enclosed within thetags
xapi:document	This node contains the attachment document and XML template related tags and attributesThe attributes in this tag are related to the email attachment Key or unique identifier of each attachment Output or attachment file name Output-type or attachment file type
xapi:template	This node contains the template information like, Type or the file type of the template Location or the directory of the template file along with the file name

The following attributes should contain the same values for bursting to function properly,
1.       Id attribute in xapi:email tag
2.       Id attribute in xapi:message tag
3.       Delivery attribute in xapi:document tag
If the 3 values do not match then delivery will not take place as expected.

Attach the bursting file to the Data Definition of the XML Publisher Report
Responsibility: XML Publisher Administrator
Navigation: Data Defintions

Upload the bursting control file

Upload the bursting file in Bursting Control File section.

Change the temporary directory location.
A temporary directory has to be provided for XML Publisher engine to use for bursting.
Responsibility: XML Publisher Administrator
Navigation: Administration tab

Set temporary directory

In Unix, /tmp directory has write permissions for all users. Enter /tmp directory as the temporary directory. This directory can be any directory on which Oracle apps has write permissions.

FTP the template
FTP the layout file, i.e. the XML layout template in the /tmp directory, as we have defined in the bursting control file that the template file location is /tmp

XML layout template in /tmp directory

 

 

XML Bursting execution process

Run the XX Employee detail report to generate the output.

Execute the report

After the report is generated, execute the program named, XML Publisher Report Bursting Program. This program is responsible for bursting the XML with the help of the bursting control file attached to the concurrent program whose output will be burst. Ensure that this program is attached to the request group of this responsibility.

XML Publisher Report Bursting Program

Select the request of the previously run report’s request id. We shall select the 2^nd request from the top, i.e. Request ID: 19011719

Concurrent request selected

Execute the bursting program

Bursting program executed

When the bursting program ends, the program name in the SRS form changes as shown below

Bursting program name changed in SRS form

Now check the output of the bursting program.

Bursting program output

The bursting program output shows that 4 emails were delivered.
We shall check the mailbox now. Remember that we had set the email address of all the 4 employees to a single email address for this demonstration within the report query itself. You can check the data template for the query at the top.

Emails sent by bursting program

Each mail body looks like the following,

Email body

The email body, attachment name and attachment file type match with the bursting control file above. The attachment will contain the data from the XX Employee detail report,

Attachment

The bursting process is now complete.
Automatic execution of XML Publisher Report Bursting Program
Since the bursting program, XML Publisher Report Bursting Program, has to be run manually this might not be feasible for all users to use. The bursting program can be executed automatically if we use a rdf report to generate the data for the XML publisher report. In a rdf report we can add the following piece of code in the After Report trigger in the report to execute the bursting program as soon as the output has been generated by the report.

01	FUNCTION afterreport

02	RETURN BOOLEAN

03

IS

04	v_req_id   NUMBER;

05

BEGIN

06	-- Call Bursting Program

07	v_req_id :=

08	fnd_request.submit_request (application => 'XDO',

09	program => 'XDOBURSTREP',

10	description      => '',

11	start_time       => '',

12	sub_request      => FALSE,

13	argument1 => 'Y',

14	argument2 => :p_conc_request_id,

15	argument3 => 'Y'

16

--CHR(0),

17

--''

18

);

19

20	IF v_req_id = 0

21

THEN

22	srw.MESSAGE (123, 'Failed to call bursting program.');

23

END IF;

24

25	srw.USER_EXIT ('FND SRWEXIT');

26	RETURN (TRUE);

27

END;

Bursting program error
The XML Publisher Bursting program might error out. The log file will talk about checking the Output Post processor logs. I have described how to get the Output Post Processor logs in a previous article.

Bursting program log

After checking the Output Post Processor logs we get the following,

01	[3/22/12 2:19:05 PM] [320381:RT19011722] Completed post-processing actions for request 19011722.

02	[3/22/12 2:33:10 PM] [OPPServiceThread0] Post-processing request 19011756.

03	[3/22/12 2:33:10 PM] [320381:RT19011756] Executing post-processing actions for request 19011756.

04	[3/22/12 2:33:10 PM] [320381:RT19011756] Starting XML Publisher post-processing action.

05	[3/22/12 2:33:10 PM] [320381:RT19011756]

06	Template code: BURST_STATUS_REPORT

07	Template app: XDO

08	Language:      en

09	Territory:     US

10	Output type:   RTF

11	[3/22/12 2:33:10 PM] [UNEXPECTED] [320381:RT19011756] java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

12	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

13	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)

14	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)

15	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)

16	at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.invokeParse(XSLT10gR1.java:566)

17	at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.transform(XSLT10gR1.java:231)

18	at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLTWrapper.transform(XSLTWrapper.java:182)

19	at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:1044)

20	at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:997)

21	at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:212)

22	at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.createFO(FOProcessor.java:1665)

23	at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.generate(FOProcessor.java:975)

24	at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.runProcessTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:5926)

25	at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3458)

26	at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3547)

27	at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.XMLPublisherProcessor.process(XMLPublisherProcessor.java:290)

28	at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.OPPRequestThread.run(OPPRequestThread.java:157)

29	Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: <Line 1, Column 1>: XML-20108: (Fatal Error) Start of root element expected.

30	at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLError.flushErrorHandler(XMLError.java:441)

31	at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLError.flushErrors1(XMLError.java:303)

32	at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseRootElement(NonValidatingParser.java:343)

33	at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseDocument(NonValidatingParser.java:285)

34	at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:289)

35	... 17 more

36

37	[3/22/12 2:33:10 PM] [320381:RT19011756] Completed post-processing actions for request 19011756.

38	This error relates to the template in the server. It means that XML processor is unable to find the template. Check the setting in the bursting control file,

39	<xapi:template type="rtf" location="/tmp/XXEMPDET.rtf">

The location specified as the XML layout template directory should be valid and all permissions must be available on this file as well as the directory.