Occasionally, after Oracle Cloud ERP’s quarterly release upgrades, you might encounter a frustrating error when running a previously functional BI Publisher report:
“Error generating view. Error getting cursor in GenerateHead.”
“Column doesn’t exist”
This error typically appears when the data model behind your BI Publisher report references a column that OTBI or Fusion Analytics no longer recognizes. This can happen after an Oracle quarterly release upgrade (every three months), which sometimes alters internal flexfield structures or metadata associated with seeded views.
To fix this, you’ll need to run a system job that re-synchronizes the metadata between flexfields and OTBI:
Run the ESS Job
Navigate to the Scheduled Processes work area in Oracle Fusion and run the following job: Import Oracle Fusion Data Extensions for Transactional Business Intelligence
This job performs the function of refreshing the metadata layer between:
- Fusion flexfields (like descriptive or extensible flexfields)
- OTBI’s logical data model
- BI Publisher data source structures
This job can take several hours depending on your environment’s complexity, especially if you have many enabled flexfields across modules.
Best Practice: Automate Post-Upgrade Execution
To avoid this issue in the future: Schedule this ESS job to run automatically after each quarterly upgrade window.
This proactive approach ensures that any new or altered flexfields are registered properly and available to OTBI and BI Publisher reports.
If you still encounter the error after running the ESS job, consider checking the following:
- Data Model Review: Revisit the affected BI Publisher data model. Identify the fields throwing the error and confirm they exist in the OTBI logical model.
- Rebuild Dataset: If a specific dataset is corrupted or outdated, try rebuilding it using the refreshed column references.
- Report Caching: Clear cached versions of the report or data model in BI Publisher.
- Check Flexfield Deployment: Ensure that any newly defined flexfields have been deployed successfully in Fusion Apps before running the ESS job.