Oracle^® Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide > Administering Oracle BI Dashboards > Configuring Report Write Back >

Write Back Limitations

Observe the following limitations for the write back feature:

• The write back abilities are for Table View only. Other views including chart, gauge, and pivot can be displayed but do not have edit fields for changing values.
• All values in write back columns are editable. When displayed in nonprinter friendly context, editable fields appear as if the user has Write Back privilege. However, when a logical column is mapped to a physical column that can change, the logical column returns values for multiple level intersections. This scenario can cause problems.
• Any field in a report can be flagged as a write back field, even if it is not derived from the write back table that you created. The responsibility for correctly tagging fields lies with the creator of the report.
• Write back reports do not support drill-down.
• The user interface does only minimal validation of data input. If the field is numeric and the user enters text data, then the user interface detects that and prevents the invalid data from going to the database. However, it does not detect other forms of invalid data input (values out of range, mixed text and numeric, and so on). When the user clicks the write back button and an insert or update is executed, invalid data results in an error message from the database. The user can then correct the faulty input. Report authors can include text in the write back report to aid the user, for example, "Entering mixed alphanumeric values into a numeric data field is not allowed."
• A template can contain SQL statements other than insert and update. The write back function passes these statements to the database. However, Oracle does not support or recommend the use of any statements other than insert or update.
• The write back feature is not suitable for entering arbitrary new records. In other words, do not use it as a data input tool.
• Numeric columns must contain numbers only. They should not contain any data formatting characters such as dollar signs ($), octothorpes (#), percent signs (%), and so on.
• Text columns should contain string data only.

CAUTION:  This feature takes user input and writes it directly to the database. The security of your physical database is your own responsibility. For optimum security, store write-back database tables in a unique database instance.