Best Practices: Importing Data

Note: Self Service dashboards that users create through Visual Insight typically contain data from outside the XBRi application, which may contain unmasked personal data viewable to all users. Oracle recommends using the Share functionality to restrict access to reports, documents, and dashboards, including the import data brought in through Self-Service BI. The Customer Admin will need to determine by either group(s) or individual(s) who can import data according to their company data privacy policy.

Consider the following best practices when importing data from a file or database*:

If you are importing data from a file that contains cross-tabbed data, be sure to appropriately highlight and specify the cells that contain your metric data, attribute element data, and the names of metric headers, as described in Importing data from a file.
Be sure that your system has enough free memory to accommodate the file. In general, your browser will require memory that is an additional 1.1 times the size of the file you want to upload. For example, to upload a 75 MB file, be sure to have at least 83 MB for the browser to use.
A space usage summary is displayed on the Import Data page and shows the amount of memory currently being occupied by published Intelligent Cubes, as well as the maximum amount of memory allocated for the Intelligent Cubes by the Administrator. You can expand this summary to view the name and size of each Intelligent Cube. XBRi will display a warning message if you are close to reaching this quota.
When republishing an Intelligent Cube with new data, consider maintaining the same data structure as your original data. If the names or data types of the columns in the original data have changed, or if columns are missing in the new data, you must map the new data to attributes and metrics before republishing the Intelligent Cube. If the data structure remains the same, XBRi automatically republishes the Intelligent Cube.

You can import data from local files on your computer using a UNC path. For example, you can provide the location of your file as File://ComputerName/Path/FileName, where ComputerName is the name of the machine on which the file is located, Path is the file path in which the file is located, and FileName is the name of the file. Specifying the location of your file as a UNC path allows you to republish or schedule updates for an Intelligent Cube created using the file, without having to manually upload the file each time the Intelligent Cube is updated.
You can republish an Intelligent Cube by clicking the name of the Intelligent Cube in XBRi. If the original data source of the Intelligent Cube was a file from a URL or UNC path, XBRi attempts to automatically republish the Intelligent Cube with new data from the same data source. If the original data source was a file uploaded from your computer, you must reupload the file. However, you can avoid having to reupload files stored on your computer by specifying the locations of files as a UNC path instead. For details, see Importing data from a file.
When importing data, keep in mind these suggested maximum file sizes for data sources:

Note: For optimum performance, be sure your file sizes and system requirements match the recommendations in the System Administration Guide.
- When importing data from a file on your computer or network:
- - Excel, text, and CSV files: 100 MB. If you strictly adhere to the system tuning best practices described in this section and increase various governing options as required, you can support maximums of up to 750 MB when using Mozilla Firefox to import data, and 400 MB when using Microsoft Internet Explorer to import data.
- Depending on the type of file you are importing, you must meet the following requirements:
- For text and CSV files:
- - Use commas to separate values. No other characters, such as tabs or semicolons, should be used to separate values in the file.
  - The file must use either UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoding.
- For CSV and Excel files:
- - Multiple worksheets can be included in the file, but only one worksheet can be uploaded at a time.
  - The first worksheet for the file cannot be empty.
  - Data for the worksheet being imported should begin within the first 20 rows of the worksheet.
- For any type of supported file:
- - Leave cells or data empty to represent NULL values rather than using the text NULL.
  - Determine whether the data for a column is numeric or textual. If there is any non-numeric value in the values for a column, use a text data type. If all values are numeric, a numeric data type can be used.