Use parameters in the folder

Question

I am new to Discoverer, so please excuse me if this is a dumb question.
Right now, we have a table that is populated through a load procedure that runs at night. This is a kill-and-fill process which just runs a SELECT statement and inserts the results into a table. Many rows are created from this.
The Discoverer report I am looking at just queries the table for the data using parameters. Simple and easy.
However, I would really like to eliminate the load procedure all together and just use a pipeline function which gets the same information... and faster.
I would like to change the SQL statement being used now to the one using the pipeline function. In order to do this, I would need to pass in the parameters from the report into the SQL statement (date range and other things).
Is this possible?
I appreciate everyones time to read this.

Answer 1

Hi,
There are two techniques you can use to pass parameters through to the table function that is referenced in a view mapped into the EUL.
1. Join your table function to a table. For example, if you want to pass EMPNO into your table function then you can create your view like this:
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW pipedview AS
SELECT e.empno, t.*
FROM emp e, TABLE(your_function(e.empno)) tThen you can create a empno parameter based on the empno column in the view. This method only works if you have a tightly controlled list of values for your parameters.
2. Use database contexts. Define a database context namespace and use a separate worksheet to set the database contexts. Check out some of these threads on how to use contexts with Discoverer:
Re: Implementing HR report in Discoverer
Re: Passing multiple parameters into Custom Folder...
Re: Parameters in SubQuery
Re: Passing Parameters to a discoverer folder using Note 282249.1
Then create your view like this:
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW pipedview AS
SELECT * FROM TABLE(your_function(SYS_CONTEXT('DISCO_CONTEXT','EMPNO'))) tYour users will have to ensure that the context has been set before the reporting worksheet is run.
Rod West