Scheduling Discoverer Reports to Save You Time

Overview

Discoverer reports can take take a long time to run. To run the report manually and then wait for the report to finish can sometimes be a timely and frustrating exercise.

An easier way to get the reports you want without the long wait is to schedule them.

Discoverer offers functionality to schedule reports and to simply open the result at a later time. But there are are a few steps to take to do this.

Getting the Right Permissions

The user wanting to schedule reports needs to have access to the table v_$parameter.


SQL> CONNECT /@ AS SYSDBA;
SQL> grant SELECT on v_$parameter to [Username];


Scheduling the Report

To schedule a report you must first save a report to be scheduled, from this point I will assume you have a report you want scheduled

• Go to File > Manage Workbooks > Scheduling Manager

• Click Schedule
• Choose Database or My Computer depending on where the report is saved and click Schedule

• Choose a workbook to run and click Schedule

• Choose the worksheet(s) to run, the time and date to run and whether to repeat the refresh and click Next

• Give the task a unique name and description and click finish. (If the name is not unique you will be prompted to let discoverer name it for you, generally adds a 1 to the end.)

• The Workbook will be visible on the main Scheduling Manager screen

Retrieving the Output

Once the report has been run

• Go to File > Manage Workbooks > Scheduling Manager
• Click the the already run scheduled task

• Click Open
• Asked whether to open the results, click Yes and you will see the report

Conclusion

So now if you need to run a long report, save yourself some time: schedule it to run over night and simply collect it in the morning.