Report Builder Question - Extracting DocumentBlobs and inserting on reports

KNIME Extensions
1

Greetings,

Is it possible with KNIME to extract Document BLOBS from a database and attach it to a BIRT report? Or if not BIRT, a different output?

The use case is pulling attachments associated with account records in a database and attach it into the report so the user doesn’t have to query the GUI to review each of the attachments, it’s generated and attached to a pre-designed report and available on demand.

Thank you, and look forward to your reply.

Signed,
John

2

Dear @jhandatx,

what kind of documents are stored in these BLOBs? Will any of the Binary Object nodes do the trick for you? For example, you could use Send Mail node and provide the documents as an attachment to the mail.

Best,
Marten

3

Greetings Marten,

There are two types: 1. Word documents with images attached inside of them. 2. Form documents in Word format.

I was hoping if there was a way to capture and attach the BLOBs into a report of some nature. Analysis isn’t really needed in this particular use case, just attaching the contents and for the report itself it would be referencing database fields (Non-BLOBs) (Ex: Account Name) and associating the attachments to that particular database record.

Thank you and look forward to your reply.

Signed,
John

4

The two types of data you can send to BIRT are images and KNIME data tables. So BIRT does not help you too much in this case. But you could create a temp directory, transform the BLOB to Files, save them in the temp directory and then send these as an attachment with Send Mail node. Metainfo (e.g. Account name) and the name of the attached file can be provided directly in the mail text.

You could use this workflow as template to start with:
https://hub.knime.com/knime/space/Examples/09_Enterprise/02_WebPortal/04_Read_file_send_as_EMail

1 Like
5

Greetings,

Okay, I could see that workflow working. Perhaps a BIRT Report with KNIME data tables on a per account record basis and a link to a temporary folder in that report so recipients can access and review the attached.

Thank you.

Signed,
John

6

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