Bursting Reports, an easier way to distribute parts of your report

Ever had someone ask you:�I have this Oracle Report that I need to email or print to file. I have to run this report multiple times with only one parameter changing. Isn’t there an easier way to perform this?�. Well there is and it is called Reports Bursting.

I came across this functionality when reviewing the Oracle Reports 9i new features and came to the conclusion it is kind of available since Oracle Reports 6. The improvement is that one is now able to burst on repeating data within the report.
Reports bursting offers you to deliver a single report to multiple destinations simultaneously. This functionality offers you to create multiple reports out of one single report model. The document Reports Bursting describes to you how to use the reports bursting functionality in Oracle Reports.

After playing around sometime with the bursting functionality of Oracle Reports I conclude that:
• Bursting your report offers you the possibility to run one report resulting in the creation of several reports.
• A fetch of the data is performed only once compared to running several times the same report with only one different input parameter.
• The formatting of the layout is performed only once.

Overall reports bursting is an elegant solution and worthwhile considering as an option for firing multiple times the same report with as only difference one input parameter.