I have had many clients ask me whether they can create Pay Variation reports in Oracle Discoverer, and how much effort is involved. It is possible and it is quite easy once you know how.

To create Pay Variance reports in Oracle Discoverer you only need access to Discoverer Administrator, and either Discoverer Desktop or Discoverer Plus (this example will use Discoverer Desktop) and a basic knowledge of how the products work.

Pay Variance reports allow users to compare employees pay details over two different pay periods.  Not only will this allow easy reading for users but also allow the creation of calculations, conditional formatting and other Discoverer features that highlight the data users need to see.

The below image is what we will now create;

Setting up the new Folder

To create a Pay Variance report in Oracle Discoverer, the first thing we need to do is setup a new folder in Discoverer Administrator.

Most clients wanting to create a Pay Variance report will already have an existing Pay folder in their End User Layer (EUL) so we will start from this point.  The below image shows the current EUL in Discoverer Administrator with the Pay folder expanded.  Our aim is to duplicate the Pay folder and join it to itself.

Duplicate the Pay Folder

It is good practice to create a new business area when creating custom folders, so I have created a business area called “Human Resources – Custom”

Since we want to duplicate the Pay folder, we can simply copy it.  To do this right click on the original Pay folder and click “Copy”

Next, right click on the business area that you want to add the duplicate the folder into and choose “Paste”

Your new folder should now appear in the business area you chose.  Next, change the name of the folder to something a little more meaningful.  I tend to call these kind of folders, the name of the original folder (In this case “Pay”) with the words “Outer Join” after it.  This is because the next step is to create an outer join to the folder.

Joining the Folders

Now we will join the new folder to the original one.  Do this by clicking on the new folder and clicking;

Insert -> Join

Then choose the field you want to join your folders by, in this case Employee ID and click “OK” to go to the join wizard.

Step 1 – Choose as many fields as you like to join the two folders together.  The fields to join by are employee identification fields like Employee ID and Job ID.  Don’t join by fields like Pay Period, as the point of this report to compare different pay periods, not join by them.  Once you choose the fields to join by click “Next”.

*Note – The folder on the left hand side of the screen is known as “Master” and the folder on the right hand side of the screen is known as “Detail”, this needs to be known for Step 2.

Step 2 – When creating the join, it can be a good idea to create an outer join.

The difference between an outer join and a regular join is;

• A regular join means that there must be a record in both tables to join by. If a record exists in one table but not the other, neither record will be displayed in the chart
• An outer join means that when linking the folders together, a record must exist in the first folder, but does not need to exist in the second folder.  For example if an employee got paid in one period, but not in the second period, the employee will still exist in the Discoverer report, but the second folder’s fields will be left blank.

We will create an outer join in this example to show records from the “Pay” folder even if they don’t exist in the “Pay – Outer Join” folder.

The join appears under the fields.

Once the new folder has been created and joined in Discoverer Administrator we can create the Pay Variance report using Discoverer Desktop.

Continue to page 2 to read this step …

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.

On investigation, we found the report was showing inconsistent data due to the Discoverer Query Governor Option “Limit retrieved query data to” set to 10,000 rows.

When the report was run, a warning appeared stating that “Not all rows have been retrieved. Data may be inaccurate”.

We asked the user to un-check this option for the workbook, and the problem was solved.  The report now returns the correct values consistently.

This story is a good example of how easy it is for the business to lose faith in reports due to a relatively minor issue – in this case a simple option setting in Discoverer.

Remember, if in doubt with any technical solution, just ask. It could be that a very simple tweak like this will have you up and running again.