Sometimes you just have to start over...

[nscheaffer]

Yesterday a built a fairly basic WebI report with two queries. In one of the queries I forced it to return no data (e.g. where 1 = 0) and used custom query script to create what I refer to as dummy prompts whose values I would use to specify one of three possible sort orders among other things. Everything worked great within WebI, but when I tried to schedule it I ran into problems.

When I tried to change the default parameter values I was allowed to do so, but when I clicked "Apply" the parameter dialog box would just pop right up again with the same default parameter values rather than what I just entered. It would do this again and again. The only way out was to click "Cancel". I tried purging the data in the report along with all parameter values. It still didn't work, same result.

About this time I realized I could probably run the report in WebI with whatever parameter values I wanted, save it and schedule it. And again. I actually need to schedule this report with 7 different sets of parameter values. While I am pretty sure that would have worked, I shouldn't have to. I should also mentioned that occasionally when attempting to schedule this report some of the current parameters would not be presented for values and an older parameter (from a previously saved iteration) that I had since deleted from the report would be presented for a value. One more thing, a coworker of mine at a different location was able to schedule this report just fine. I wanted to SCREAM!!!

We are running 4.1 SP01 Patch 2 in a multi-tiered load balanced environment. So we have two web servers and two application servers. So we suspected that he was getting a different server than I was and that was why it was working for him and not me. We decided to reboot the entire system (all four servers) last night after hours in the hopes that would fix it. No luck.

I decided to deconstruct and rebuild my report. I completely deleted the query with the custom query script and dummy prompts, saved the report and rebuilt that query and saved it again. It worked perfectly in WebI. However, now when I tried to schedule and update the parameter values I got an error...

Not on correct event type; expected START_ELEMENT, but was END_ELEMENT. (Error: INF )

I did some Googling and found nothing conclusive.

Up to this point I had been using the Java applet version of WebI (with Java 7.40) within Chrome. I tried loading the report and saving it from the HTML and Rich Desktop Client versions of WebI and continued to get the same error when trying to set the parameter values in the schedule.

My coworker suggested the report must have become corrupted somehow. Using the Rich Desktop Client I started over and rebuilt the report from scratch making it identical to the original including the query with the custom query script and dummy prompts. Now I am able to set the parameter values in the schedule as expected. I wish I knew what was wrong with the original, but I really don't. Thanks to my colleague's advice I have a working report and I am moving on.

Noel