Ad-hoc database queries

If I'm reading the information_schema correctly (still learning my way around SQL), the field mdl_message.fullmessagehtml is a longtext and character_maximum_length is 4294967295 (4G). So, its probably (!) not the message size. By my meager calculations, the message is at most 350K.
For debugging, other than enabling $CFG->showcronsql and $CFG->showcrondebugging, what else would help? My complicating factor is we only have email enabled on our production system. So I can't enable debugging for too long.
Thanks,
Richard

Sorry, I can't think why that would be happening. You will probably need to debug it. Message size is a good guess. What size is that column in the DB?

I'm looking into why a scheduled report is not being emailed. It is failing a write to the database. After enabling $CFG->showcronsql and $CFG->showcrondebugging, it looks like it fails saving to the mdl_message table before emailing. Question - is there any size limitation to saving to the table? The reason I ask is if I cut down on the number of columns or the number of rows returned from the query, the report is successfully emailed. If I add back the information that I need in the report (it returns almost 3K rows now), it fails. For what its worth, it does create the CSV file in /moodledata/admin_report_customsql. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Richard

@Tim: Thanks for the explanation, very helpful, problem solved ...

@Andreas, there is no automatic way to delete the archive.
You can do this manually if you have access to the server. The archived reports are stored in [moodledata]/admin_report_customsql, in folders named for the report id (which you can get from the URL) and the filename clearly includes the date and the time. You can just delete those files from the server.
Of course, it might be nice for someone to code a new feature for this report to automatically delete old reports after a certain amount of time.

Paging and sorting are not currently an option. All the data is shown on one page. This is simple and seems to work.
For sorting (or any other more complex processing) any report can be downloaded as CSV, and then manipulated in a spreadsheet program like Excel or Libre Office.

Hi. Thanks for this plugin, it is very useful. One question: Can I create my reports with paging and sorting? Thanks in advance

Dear all,
thanks for this very useful plugin, we use it to communicate weekly reports of participants on security trainings in our plants.
As I can see, the plugin creates automatically an archive of the queries. My question: Is there a chance to delete the archived Versions without deleting the whole query?
Or is the archive a result of the SQL query?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
CR Andreas

To answer most of those questions with full certainty, I would have to check what the code is doing. And, I know that you are very capable of understanding the code yourself, so would you be able to start trying that? Most of the back-end stuff is in locallib.php, and the method names are quite clear. Of course, if there is anything you can't work out yourself, please ask again. Thanks.

I can't get scheduled reports to email at all.
Email from my server works. I've set up two users: 1 a site admin, and 1 with `report/customsql:view`, and set these usernames as the recipients of a weekly report. I can see that the report is running: It tells me the latest time it ran and shows me the previous outputs that it generated, yet I get no emails. In the standard log for the report_customsql component there are entries for viewed and edited but none for notification.
How do I test that a scheduled weekly or monthly report runs? - I'd like a "run now" sort of option so I don't have to wait a week to find out that my query was actually buggy.
What is the first day of the week? Is that a Sunday or a Monday? The accepted answer is different depending on where you live. Here people respond "Monday".
I'm confused by the `%%STARTTIME%%` and `%%ENDTIME%%` settings. There's no explanation of how this relates to the date it runs in the interface and even the code seems a little confusing to me. Is the start time the beginning of the *previous* week and the end the end of the day before the report runs again? That's what I expect, so I could report on things that happened in the last week up until right now. I can't test these in a normal on-demand report since they don't get replaced.
Minor niggle: If I set up a report as "on demand" then run it, then change its type to "daily", I see "this report was run on (date)" in the text next to it. If I then open the report, the screen then says "This query has not yet been run.".

Hi are there any plans to certify this for use with moodle 3.2/3.3? I have a managed site and the provider won't install any plugins that aren't listed as supported. Many thanks.

@Jon Bolton - thanks, exactly correct. Appreciate the help.

So the clue is in the message... you've installed the plugin in the blocks folder but it should be in the reports folder

Guys, would appreciate some help on this... whilst trying to install...
Plugin "report_customsql" is installed in incorrect location "$CFG->dirroot/blocks/customsql", expected location is "$CFG->dirroot/report/customsql"
More information about this error
×Debug info:
Error code: detectedmisplacedplugin
×Stack trace:
line 835 of /lib/upgradelib.php: plugin_misplaced_exception thrown
line 446 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_blocks()
line 1754 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
line 699 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()

Validating report_customsql ... Error
[Error] Write access check [/opt/bitnami/apps/moodle/htdocs/report]
Installation aborted due to validation failure
For the error above, if you execute the commands below, the installation will go through.
I wondering why need to run the command below though.
sudo chown -R bitnami:daemon /opt/bitnami/apps/moodle/htdocs/report
sudo chmod -R g+w /opt/bitnami/apps/moodle/htdocs/report