PL/SQL Access to Saved Report Data - oracle-apex

Using 4.1 (latest version).
I have an Interactive Report page in my app. Users are free to create and save public and private reports setting any filter conditions they choose. What I need to do is loop through these reports and "process" some data based on a column value that matches the filter condition (something like an EMPLOYEE_ID).
What I would like to do is package this functionality into a PL/SQL procedure that is scheduled using DBMS_SCHEDULER.
Other than trying to reverse engineer this from the APEX views, I am stuck. Any help is greatly appreciated.

The bad news: there is no built-in way to get the query of an interactive report.
(I hope you can program PLSQL, otherwise you've hit a dead end.)
However, i have a package which does most of the work and is indeed processing the application metadata for IRs. It can handle both column and row filters, and also columns which have an lov laid on top of them. It doesn't handle computations or aggregates.
You'd have to take the code and adjust it somewhat though, as my goal was returning some data through json back to the browser, but you won't have to write the query-rebuilding part anymore. I'll refer you to my blog post i made about my package and why i made it, so that might clear up some of the usage of it for you. You can get the zip, and you'll need the APEX_IR package. (at time of writing, it still contains a stupid oversight in that it ignores the dis/enabled state of filters)

Related

What is the most customisable apex-region type/ plug-in based on a table?

I'd like to display the contents of a database table in a more interesting manner than just a table; different positioning, fonts, sizes, colours etc.
Is there a region type or plugin that can achieve that?
I tried the cards view but I it's still very limited (for example a minimum of 2 cards per row when I only need 1) Or maybe I should deploy it as a classic report and then use javascript to rearrange everything? edit: I also considered rendering the page with pl/sql and htp, but that seems overly complicated...
As I'm new to APEX, any input would be much appreciated!
You could do it as a classic report and change the template under the attributes to something else.
What I ended up doing was using an interactive report with a 'detail view'. That way you can use html+css and reference the data from the columns by using #column_name#. I'm really satisfied with it.
However the above answers are also very interesting! I definitely learned a lot experimenting with them.

How to clean up after Sitecore template "Shared" setting was "packaged" and "installed" and items using this field are unaware

we faced very specific scenario in our Sitecore enviroment. In our Sitecore we have a item, lets call it "Promotion". Promotion was using "End date" field that was shared.
On our dev instance we "unshared" the field. Which naturally triggers the background process that changes the items to use field in unshared mode.
Similar process is described here: http://sitecoreblog.alexshyba.com/2011/10/changing-field-sharing-settings-in.html
So then we packaged and installed change of "unsharing field" on production "master" database. As I assume during installation the background process of "updating the items" has not been triggered. Which now behaves in the way, that "unshared" field on our production master database cannot be saved. Cahnges of value after clicking save are "vanishing". I am sure they are now being saved in some language agnostic mode.
Of course simple fix for that is to "share" it back and "unshare" it again. However when we tried to do this experiment on copy of our enviroment and we noticed all the values were lost. As the items from mentioned template are heavily used, we cannot really afford loosing those values.
Any ideas?
I would go "database digging". Sitecore stores these field values in their respective databases inside the "SharedFields", "VersionedFields" and "UnversionedFields" tables.
Assuming you shut off your Sitecore instances (this is important), you should be able to SELECT the data out of the wrong table, and INSERT it into the correct one.
(you need to look for items where FieldId matches the field you are having trouble with)
From what you've described, I don't believe Sitecore has removed any data on your production environment (yet).
So the solution we came up to, was to use Sitecore Rocks tool. We exported all the Items containing the fields before changing the field to "Share". The query was more or less like that:
SELECT ##ID, ##Start Date#, ##End Date# FROM //*[##templateid='{993DC54F-6724-46C3-B8D2-3EE13F15366A}']
It gave us proper values at that point, even though to items were pointing to the SharedFields table. We just simply converted the result of this query (around 9000 rows) in Excel to Sitecore Rocks update query -
UPDATE SET ##Start Date#='20120531T000000',##End Date#='20120614T000000' FROM //* [##ID='{E3FD9819-3DBD-4FAA-8DEF-FEF2A6272723}'];
After prepared this migrations script, we shared the appropriate field and apply the script of 9000 updates queries through Sitecore Rocks. We need to to exactly the same on Live database. Everything went pretty smooth.
The same approach could be easily done with the database I believe, however this solution was better for us, because of non-technical reasons (security policies etc.). Anyway Sitecore Rocks rocks!

Performance issue when typing into search input when retrieving objects from store

I have a search field, which lets the user search books (filters records, which are retrieved with ember-data).
I have found that any access the store from the results computed property within my component (see jsbin) makes the typing into the search field very slow (noticeable on my PC, and terrible on smartphone).
Here is a screenshot of the Timeline pane when typing a search query. The displayed part show that every keypress causes A LOT of layout (the search field seems to rerendered on every keypress). I also provide the exported timeline which you can load into your dev tools as explained here
I have tried to recreate the issue in a jsfiddle, but it seems to work just fine. The difference might be that in the jsbin I am using fixtures, while in my app I retrieve data from a real API.
I don't understand what is causing this behavior. It may be hard to come to any conclusion from the data I can provide, but does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone experienced similar performance issues?
Update 2014-03-01
I should note that the performance hit only happens if the results computed property contains a call to the store. If I replace it with any other thing (like just returning [], or some random async method -- like $.get) it not display this performance hit.
Additionally, I should make it clear (in case you didn't read the code), that the results computed property is not called on every keypress, but only when the search is submitted.
This is not a Ember/Ember-data bug, but apparently a Google Chrome bug.
I have created a new question regarding the issue here

How to accept user input with Sitecore DMS report/filter?

With the Sitecore OMS, it was possible to create custom report filters that used the Sitecore rules engine to accept user input. This was useful for filtering by ItemId, URL, IP Address, etc. Here is an example of a custom filter for the OMS.
How does one go about accepting user input with the Sitecore DMS? It appears that the old filter methodology has been scrapped in lieu of "Predefined Filters", which are hard-coded values that get injected into the SQL Statement's WHERE clause.
You are aware that every item in Sitecore has the Analyze tab in which there is a "Reports" option where the user can see reports specific to the item? I realize that these are really "canned" reports, but it's not too difficult to create new ones or adapt the existing ones to give you what you want to see. If the reports aren't specific enough, you can always create your own reports and then just simply drop them into the item reports folder here: /sitecore/system/Settings/Analytics/Reports/Item Reports/. Also, keep in mind that all the SQL queries are located in items here: /sitecore/system/Settings/Analytics/Reports SQL Queries and it's not difficult to add a parameter (i.e. the date parameter for example).
I know that it has a bit of a learning curve, but creating your own queries and reports capable of taking some user input isn't out of the question. Please let me know if you have something specific or if you need further help. I've spent a good amount of time doing custom reports and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Need help optimizing this Django aggregate query

I have the following model
class Plugin(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
# more fields
which represents a plugin that can be downloaded from my site. To track downloads, I have
class Download(models.Model):
plugin = models.ForiegnKey(Plugin)
timestamp = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
So to build a view showing plugins sorted by downloads, I have the following query:
# pbd is plugins by download - commented here to prevent scrolling
pbd = Plugin.objects.annotate(dl_total=Count('download')).order_by('-dl_total')
Which works, but is very slow. With only 1,000 plugins, the avg. response is 3.6 - 3.9 seconds (devserver with local PostgreSQL db), where a similar view with a much simpler query (sorting by plugin release date) takes 160 ms or so.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to optimize this query. I'd really prefer that the query return Plugin objects (as opposed to using values) since I'm sharing the same template for the other views (Plugins by rating, Plugins by release date, etc.), so the template is expecting Plugin objects - plus I'm not sure how I would get things like the absolute_url without a reference to the plugin object.
Or, is my whole approach doomed to failure? Is there a better way to track downloads? I ultimately want to provide users some nice download statistics for the plugins they've uploaded - like downloads per day/week/month. Will I have to calculate and cache Downloads at some point?
EDIT: In my test dataset, there are somewhere between 10-20 Download instances per Plugin - in production I expect this number would be much higher for many of the plugins.
That does seem unusually slow. There's nothing obvious in your query that would cause that slowness, though. I've done very similar queries in the past, with larger datasets, and they have executed in milliseconds.
The only suggestion I have for now is to install the Django debug toolbar, and in its SQL tab find the offending query and go to EXPLAIN to get the database to tell you exactly what it is doing when it executes. If it's doing subqueries, for example, check that they are using an index - if not, you may need to define one manually in the db. If you like, post the result of EXPLAIN here and I'll help further if possible.
Annotations are obviously slow, as they need to update every record in the db.
One direct way would be to denormalize the db field. Use a download_count field on the plugin models that is incremented on the new save of Download. Use the sort by the aggregate query on Plugins.
If you think there are going to be too many downloads to update another record of the Plugin all the time, you can update the download_count field on the Plugin via a cron.