Rudimentary automated PDF generation using Delivers

Question

Hi Everyone,
Thought I would share a little proof of concept I have managed to get working. I know there are simpler ways to have done this but our scenario was as follows:
Needed to generate 1000 odd customer reports. A dashboard which had already been formatted and included all of the various reports (approximately ten reports) was the basis of the requirement. There were 3 options as far as I could see:
1. Have somebody filter the dashboard 1000 times and save the results to PDF.
2. Redevelop the reports in BI Publisher.
3. Find a way to have the dashboard automatically create a PDF document.
Seeing as BI Publisher was certainly not my strength and we were under time pressure I decided to pursue option 3.
I setup the following logic:
1. Created a query that includes all the customers that need to be part of the reporting.
2. Created a table in the datawarehouse containing unique customer identifier and progress indicator.
3. Created a script that could be run from the query with all the customers in. Script populates table created in step 2 with all customer identifiers with the first record being marked in progress and the rest not started.
4. Create a subject area built off the table created in step 2 (no caching enabled)
5. Create a session variable based on selecting from the table populated in step 3 where status = In Progress
6. Create a second iBot that has a conditional request built off subject area created in step 4 where status = In Progress
7. Second iBot to deliver a dashboard page. All queries on page filtered on customer identifier = session variable from step 5
8. Create a script to automate the "engine"
8. Pass contents of iBot delivery to script
9. Script gets Customer identifier and creates file with same name
10. Script updates table and sets current record that is in progress to complete and next record that is not started to In Progress
11. iBot calls itself.
I think that is roughly how I got it to work. I am aware there are probably simpler ways to do this but I had fun doing it this way.
Let me know what you think.
Edited by: ChrisMarais on 12/05/2011 18:47

Answer 1

Nice post Chris, hope things treating you well down under.
The last line where the ibot calls itself, exiting the loop is dealt with by the incremental update of the status on the table, can you remember if you had a third status as complete??
Regards
Nick Holme