Sending a Request to the URL Engine

18-14 Publishing Reports to the Web with Oracle Reports Services If you publish a report as a portal component on an Oracle Portal page, then you can schedule the report request to run automatically and push the resulting report output to specified pages. Refer to the Oracle Portal online Help for more information. The SCHEDULE command line keyword is available for use with the rwclient and rwservlet commands. See Section A.8.3, SCHEDULE for more information.

18.11 Additional Parameters

When you send a request to the Reports Server through rwcgi ,the following additional parameters, the values of which you cannot change, are implicitly passed along with your request:

18.12 Reusing Report Output from Cache

When you run a report, a copy of the report output is saved in the Oracle Reports Services cache. Subsequently, if an identical report is run that is, with the same cache key, then the current request is recognized as a duplicate job. There are several scenarios where reports caching takes effect: ■ When a new job request A comes to the Reports Server, and there is another job B that has the same cache key in the Current Jobs Queue where it is waiting for an available engine or is in the middle of execution, then job A will use the output from job B. The job cache key excludes the destype, desname, server, and tolerance parameters, and includes almost all other parameters. This level of cache happens automatically. You need not specify any other parameters in the command line for it to work. ■ If the user specifies TOLERANCE=n where n is a number in units of minutes in the new job request A, then Reports Server will try to find a job in the Finished Jobs Queue than was successfully completed within n minutes. If Reports Server finds such a job, then the new job request A will return the output of job B. Table 18–4 Additional Parameters Passed With a Report Request Name Description ACCEPT_LANGUAGE The comma separated list of languages accepted by the browseruser. REMOTE_ADDR The remote IP address from which the user is making the request. REMOTE_HOST The remote host name from which the user is making the request. SCRIPT_NAME The virtual path of the script being executed. SERVER_NAME The host name or IP address of the server on which Oracle Reports Servlet rwservlet is running. SERVER_PORT The port number of the server on which Oracle Reports Servlet rwservlet is running. SERVER_PROTOCOL The name and revision of the information protocol with which the request was sent. USER_AGENT The description of the remote clients browser. Running Report Requests 18-15 Oracle Reports Services cache results are persistent. If the Reports Server is shut down, once it is up again all the previous cache results are recovered and ready to use again.

18.12.1 Usage Note

You can set the cache size through Reports Queue Manager rwrqm on Windows, or rwrqv.sh on Solaris or through the cache element in the server configuration file rwserver.conf. Reports Server attempts to keep the total size of cache files below the set limit, deleting the oldest cache files. In addition, you can empty the cache through Reports Queue Manager. For more information on setting the cache, refer to the Reports Queue Manager online Help, and see Chapter 8, Configuring Oracle Reports Services .

18.13 Using a Key Map File

If you choose to provide users with a URL or add a hyperlink to a Web site, then you can use a key map file to simplify or hide parameters in your URL requests. This section provides the following information: ■ Understanding Key Mapping ■ Enabling Key Mapping ■ Adding Key Mapping Entries to a Key Map File ■ Using a Key with Non-JSP Reports ■ Using a Key with a Report Run as a JSP

18.13.1 Understanding Key Mapping

The key map file contains command strings for running reports, each headed by a unique key identifier. Except when you run a report as a JSP, you reference only this key in the runtime URL. Oracle Reports Servlet rwservlet sends the key value to the key map file cgicmd.dat, which in turn returns the command associated with the specified key to rwservlet for processing. By using key mapping, the command line options are all hidden from the user. Key mapping is useful for: ■ Shortening the URL, making it more convenient to use. ■ Remapping the runtime commands without having to change the original URL. ■ Standardizing several typical run configurations for your company. ■ Hiding certain parameters from users for example, the database connect string. ■ Restricting the parameters users can use to run a report. When you specify a key name from the key map file cgicmd.dat, it must always be at the beginning of the query string after the question mark in a report request URL. An exception to this is if you use the CMDKEY command line keyword, and express the key name as its value: CMDKEY=keyname. In this case, you can place the key name anywhere in the query string within the report request URL. The CMDKEY keyword can be used with jobs run as JSPs and with the rwservlet command. Note: Refer to Section A.8.22, TOLERANCE for more information.