Re: Need advice..

On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 12:37:38 -0700, at interested us by writing:

> I need advice on the following:
>
> We have a table in Oracle where audit information is kept. As a new
> requirement, on a monthly basis we need to send an email containing the
> contents of that table to users. The table have a lot of columns and I
> don't think I can format nicely in the body of the email. Can anyone
> suggest what is the best way to approach this (HTML,XML,CSV)? Also,
> once the report is generated, i would like to store in a table.
>
> Thanks,
> AT

1. Look at Oracle Discoverer. It is a tool designed for id- er, end users. It helps make such information visible in a user friendly manner and can be presented in an HTML page, an email or any pof a number of other methods. It allows per-user security, drill down and graphs and lots of pretty colours to help people click on the right spot.

It would likely be perfect for this job.

2) As an alternative, look at UTL_SMTP (which is supplied free with the database) to mail directly from the database and the possibility of extracting and formatting a CSV that contains all the same information as the Discoverer output which can be imported into Excel.

That way you don't have to buy Discoverer and simply spend the same amount of money in a custom development that you can then support on your own forever.

3) Or make it available as a webv page using a custom developed PHP or .Net application. Same benefit of being able to spend the money on development and maintenance as the previous choice.

-- 
Hans Forbrich                           
Canada-wide Oracle training and consulting
mailto: Fuzzy.GreyBeard_at_gmail.com   
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