Hi all,

If I make some changes to my report and then run it, I do not "see" the new changes unless I hit the refresh button. I checked the IE options and tried using "every visit to the page" and all other choices but nothing seems to work. Any ideas?

I don't believe it is possible to totally turn off caching in IE. Even if you set the option to "Every visit", it can still cache for that browser session. I assume you are developing a self service app (not MRE-based). For MRE reports, WebFOCUS automatically handles the caching issue by including a random number field in the request. This tricks the browser into thinking it is a new request. This is the easiest (and most reliable) way around the caching issue. There is an example of this on the /ibi_html/workbnch/logon.htm page. It has a hidden field called IBIMR_random that is populated (via javascript) with a random number everytime you submit the form.

Hope this helps.

Sounds great but I am so new to this product that I don't know what MRE is.

MRE is the managed reporting environment. You can read more about it here.

Monica

Ah yes, MRE, I have seen that. Just have to learn the acronyms.

THX

Just so you know, you don't have to use MRE to do this technique. When you run the report, just make sure the web form (the place where you click Submit to run the request) has a hidden field on it, and set the VALUE of that field to a random value using javascript - like the current time, or use the math.floor.random() function to generate a random number.

If you're the user of the app, not the developer, just share this technique with your developer. It's a common way to do it.

It's also possible to change this globally and more elegantly by changing a parameter in your CGIVARS.WFS file (found in your CGI's ETC directory on your Web server):

EXPIRE_REPORTS =300

This puts a setting in the responding HTTP header that determines the number of seconds before a WebFOCUS report expires in your local browser cache. If you set it to 1, reports expire 1 second after they're sent - so you get immediate refresh when you click, for example, the Refresh button.

Hope this helps!

Now that I like!

One other thing to look for is the "Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed" under the advanced tab => security section. If this is checked then each time the browser window is closed cacheing will be eliminated.

if you put this line in your HEAD tags:
META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NOCACHE"
Put carets around it..i can't put them in this message board, it won't take them.
Use this tag and your pages just wont cache.
way cool.
i have a self-serv webfocus app, with multiple HTML pages appearing on my login page and i want to make sure they are always current.
So this little trick works like a charm.

Cheers!

Susannah--
Setting EXPIRE_REPORTS actually does this under the covers... that's how it works. With the setting in place, you don't have to do any hand-coding to make sure you never get reports from the browser cache. Try it!

hey bob, would the EXPIRE setting = 1 have any affect on the user's abilty to use the BACK button on his browser??

EXPIRE_REPORTS does the same thing as setting the META tag to expire - the technique you discovered.

It's just a bit easier to do as it requires no code to be written to do this - the CGI generates the page .

I would assume that doing this would mean that the page would be reloaded fresh from the server when the user tried to go back to the page using the back button - the cache would show the document as expired when Back tries to access the url.

Your mileage might vary depending on the browser you were using but the basic assumption is that the page would be reloaded.

thanks