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A system action is simply an action sequence that is configured to run either at system start time (i.e. when the application server starts) or session start time (i.e. when the user logs in). The output of a system action is available to other action sequences as input parameters. System actions are configured by adding the appropriate child elements to the <system-action> element in the pentaho.xml file.
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Next, in the action sequence editor, add an input called name to the Process Inputs tree control. Configure it to be of type string, and define its scope to be session.
When the user logs into the BI Platform, the platform places a parameter called name into the session scope. name is the user name that was used to log into the platform. We can get access to this parameter by defining it as an input to our action sequence.
The DEPARTMENT_MANAGERS table of the SampleData database has the columns MANAGER_NAME, REGION, and EMAIL. MANAGER_NAME is the full name of the manager. We need a mechanism for mapping the user's login name to their fullname. We can then use a SQL query in an action sequence to discover the user's region.
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If Keep Connections Open is not checked, when a Relational action runs a database query, it immediately stores the results of the query into a light-weight java object, and closes the connection to the database. This light-weight java object can be stored as a parameter in request, session or global scope. This makes the object available to other actions in this action sequence, and to other action sequences executing at another time. |
We now have the name of the region that the manager is responsible for, but it is still in the result set. We don't want to keep the relatively large result set in our user session when all we really need is just a simple string"heavy" result set. We only need the string from the result set with the region information. We can use another JavaScript action to get the region string out of our result set, and then store the region string into our session.
In the Process Actions tree control, click on the Add control and select Generate Data From -> JavaScript.
Since we need access to the result set from the previous action, in the Scripts Input, click on the Add control and select RS_MANAGERS_REGION.
Next, add the following code in the JavaScript editor:
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(TODO: add note about NOT declaring as var)
This will get the region string out of the result set and place it in a JavaScript variable called strRegion.
We want to make the variable strRegion available to action sequences that the user may execute later in their session. So we need to place strRegion into the user's session. To do this, add the variable strRegion to the Script Outputs, and identify its type as string. Once we've done this, you'll notice that in the Process Actions tree control, the script output shows up under our JavaScript action. This identifies strRegion as an ouput of the JavaScript action, but we need it to be an output of our action sequence.
To make strRegion an output of our action sequence, in the Process Actions tree control, drag and drop strRegion onto the outputs in the Process Outputs tree control. You'll notice that this will display open the Process Output editor in the right pane. In the Process Output editor, click in the first cell of the table, this will display a combo box with a list of scopes (e.g. request, sesion, global, etc.) We want to place the strRegion into the session scope, so select session from the combo box. At the conclusion of the action sequence, strRegion will be in the user's session, available to any action sequence executed by the user.
Adding strRegion to the user's session isn't terribly useful unless we do something with it. Earlier I talked about using the user's region information to filter the data the user sees in a financial report. Let's create an action sequence that will filter the data returned by a relational database query and display it in a simple HTML report.
Create a new action sequence in Eclipse using the action sequence editor. Call it getActualsForRegion.xaction, and place it in the samples/filters folder of the repository.
Next, in the action sequence editor, add an input called strRegion to the Process Inputs tree control. Configure it to be of type string, and define its scope to be session. This is what will give us access to the output parameter of our userNameToRegion.xaction action sequence.
In the Process Actions tree control, click on the Add control and select Get Data From -> Relational. Make sure the JNDI radio button is selected, and that the JNDI name is SampleData.
In the SampleData database, there is a table called QUADRANT_ACTUALS containing financial information. The table has a variety of columns with financial data, and one column identifying the region that the data is associated with. We will use the strRegion parameter from our Process Inputs to filter the SQL query using a SQL where clause. Add this query to the Query editor:
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