Focal Point Banner


As of December 1, 2020, Focal Point is retired and repurposed as a reference repository. We value the wealth of knowledge that's been shared here over the years. You'll continue to have access to this treasure trove of knowledge, for search purposes only.

Join the TIBCO Community
TIBCO Community is a collaborative space for users to share knowledge and support one another in making the best use of TIBCO products and services. There are several TIBCO WebFOCUS resources in the community.

  • From the Home page, select Predict: WebFOCUS to view articles, questions, and trending articles.
  • Select Products from the top navigation bar, scroll, and then select the TIBCO WebFOCUS product page to view product overview, articles, and discussions.
  • Request access to the private WebFOCUS User Group (login required) to network with fellow members.

Former myibi community members should have received an email on 8/3/22 to activate their user accounts to join the community. Check your Spam folder for the email. Please get in touch with us at community@tibco.com for further assistance. Reference the community FAQ to learn more about the community.


Focal Point    Focal Point Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  WebFOCUS/FOCUS Forum on Focal Point     [CLOSED] Read Excel File as a Source Stored on a Shared Drive

Read-Only Read-Only Topic
Go
Search
Notify
Tools
[CLOSED] Read Excel File as a Source Stored on a Shared Drive
 Login/Join
 
Expert
posted
What's the best way / best practice to Read Excel File as a Source, in 8.2, which is Stored on a Shared Drive? The Excel file is a simple one tab, several columns, the format will not change.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FP Mod Chuck,




   In FOCUS Since 1983 ~ from FOCUS to WebFOCUS.
   Current: WebFOCUS Administrator at FIS Worldpay | 8204, 8206
 
Posts: 3132 | Location: Tennessee, Nashville area | Registered: February 23, 2005Report This Post
Virtuoso
posted Hide Post
Try Excel (via direct retrieval) in the Adapter list on the reporting server. Unless of course you can upload into a real database.


WebFOCUS 8206, Unix, Windows
 
Posts: 1853 | Location: New York City | Registered: December 30, 2015Report This Post
Expert
posted Hide Post
This can't reside on the WebFOCUS Servers. It resides in a folder on a Windows Shared Drive.
 
Posts: 3132 | Location: Tennessee, Nashville area | Registered: February 23, 2005Report This Post
Platinum Member
posted Hide Post
The WebFOCUS server needs to be able to access that file, so it needs to be in the path... are you on unix or windows for the WF? It needs to be a 'folder'you can navigate to... mounted directory or symlink or such.


Cheers,
H.

WebFOCUS 8.1.05M
Oracle 11g - DB2
RedHat
 
Posts: 115 | Location: Brighton UK | Registered: February 19, 2005Report This Post
Virtuoso
posted Hide Post
In addition to that, in our experience Excel 2007+ files aren't great with parallel access to their contents.

WebFOCUS has to unzip the file to read it, but as far as I understand, it doesn't leave it unzipped and ends up doing so over and over. This can result in it overwriting a previously unzipped version that's still in use by a parallel running TABLE request on the same file, resulting in errors.

You might want to HOLD it to a FOCUS file, or better yet, a table in a proper RDBMS. Both performance and concurrent access will be a lot better.


WebFOCUS 8.1.03, Windows 7-64/2008-64, IBM DB2/400, Oracle 11g & RDB, MS SQL-Server 2005, SAP, PostgreSQL 11, Output: HTML, PDF, Excel 2010
: Member of User Group Benelux :
 
Posts: 1669 | Location: Enschede, Netherlands | Registered: August 12, 2010Report This Post
Platinum Member
posted Hide Post
How often does that excel file change?

What I'd suggest to do, instead of accessing the excel directly, "cacheing" it along the lines what colleague Wep5622 above is suggesting. What you want to do is make a batch job that reads the excel into a FOCUS table you hold on the server disk. Or if it is updated randomly, make a "refresh" report/schedule the user can invoke after saving (unless you have a sniffer and trigger there in the share)

That way, the "use" of the excel is 1:1 by the batch job only so the conflicts above get mitigated, and you can then run reports off the FOCUS table as you please.

The question with using cacheing is "how often does the data change" and "how often does it get accessed". Say you have a dashboard with 10 dropdowns each running a dynamic report joining a couple tables. Now running a SQL query as a batch once at night vs. 1000 users 9am running the same dashboard refresh does magic to load and response times.


Cheers,
H.

WebFOCUS 8.1.05M
Oracle 11g - DB2
RedHat
 
Posts: 115 | Location: Brighton UK | Registered: February 19, 2005Report This Post
Expert
posted Hide Post
Thanks Guys,

As far as the following quote goes, I need to start by getting WebFOCUS to read the file in the first place. Accessing it on the share drive seems to be the issue.

We're running WebFOCUS on Unix and my file is on a Windows share drive.
quote:
make a batch job that reads the excel into a FOCUS table you hold on the server disk.




   In FOCUS Since 1983 ~ from FOCUS to WebFOCUS.
   Current: WebFOCUS Administrator at FIS Worldpay | 8204, 8206
 
Posts: 3132 | Location: Tennessee, Nashville area | Registered: February 23, 2005Report This Post
Virtuoso
posted Hide Post
Microsoft has an ODBC connection on Unix. I haven't tried this myself but that might be the approach for what you're trying to do.

Alternatively, it might be a lot easier for you to use a CSV file instead of Excel if that's an option.


WebFOCUS 8206, Unix, Windows
 
Posts: 1853 | Location: New York City | Registered: December 30, 2015Report This Post
Platinum Member
posted Hide Post
Ok, is it actually a shared drive on a physical box, or is it a SAN drive (you could access otherwise)

So, then, you need to mount the share... something like:

mount -t cifs -o username=<share user>,password=<share password>,domain=<domain> //<ip address>/<share name> /mnt  


Depends on what you have available on your boxes, google-fu the specific versions, theres stuff to do to keep the mounts after reboot or if you need different authentication or stuff.


Cheers,
H.

WebFOCUS 8.1.05M
Oracle 11g - DB2
RedHat
 
Posts: 115 | Location: Brighton UK | Registered: February 19, 2005Report This Post
Expert
posted Hide Post
Thanks All,
I'll get with my Admins about this and let post my final results.
 
Posts: 3132 | Location: Tennessee, Nashville area | Registered: February 23, 2005Report This Post
Master
posted Hide Post
test 123


Tomsweb
WebFOCUS 8.1.05M, 8.2.x
APP Studio, Developer Studio, InfoAssist, Dashboards, charts & reports
Apache Tomcat/8.0.36
 
Posts: 573 | Location: Baltimore, MD | Registered: July 06, 2006Report This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  

Read-Only Read-Only Topic

Focal Point    Focal Point Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  WebFOCUS/FOCUS Forum on Focal Point     [CLOSED] Read Excel File as a Source Stored on a Shared Drive

Copyright © 1996-2020 Information Builders