About text output About creating an ASCII character-mode report

2-80 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports ■ Generate a report to delimited output , as described in Section 4.7.10, Generating delimited output : Advantage : Delimited output can be generated from existing paper layout reports saved in any format .rdf, .xml, .jsp, either directly from Oracle Reports Builder, or by running the report from the command line. Disadvantage : Only data as defined by the report Data Model, no layout information, displays in the output. ■ Deploy a report with the Reports Server under Oracle WebLogic Server to display it in Microsoft Excel inside your Web browser , using either of the following methods: – When you do not have an existing paper layout: open an Excel HTML template file in Oracle Reports Builder, add the data, save the report as a JSP file, then deploy the report. This method enables you to use JSP coding to include dynamic Excel formulas not just static values of Reports summary and formula columns, dynamic graphs not just static Reports graph images. – When you do have an existing paper layout: starting with a paper layout report, edit the Web Source view to add a rw:include tag to include the group frame of your paper layout in the Web source view as JSP code, save the report as a JSP file, then deploy the report. For the steps to implement this method, see Chapter 29, Building a Report for Enhanced Spreadsheet Output . Advantage : You can use rich formatting such as colors and fonts so that you generate report layout, not just data, in Microsoft Excel output inside a Web browser. Disadvantages : You must add custom JSP coding to get the output in Excel. The report can only be run through the JSP engine and not through rwservlet, thus this method can only display the Microsoft Excel output inside a Web browser. See also Section 4.7.11, Generating Enhanced spreadsheet output For choosing the appropriate delimited output solution for given requirements, see Displaying Report Output in Microsoft Excel in the appendix Troubleshooting Oracle Reports Services in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Publishing Reports to the Web with Oracle Reports Services manual.

2.8.14 About text output

Oracle Reports Builder can generate report output to text files, containing the formatted data and all objects. When you generate your report output to text, and the running mode is character MODE=CHARACTER, or MODE system parameter Initial Value property set to Character, the result is pure text output, which can be read by many different applications. If the running mode is bitmap MODE=BITMAP, or MODE system parameter Initial Value property set to Bitmap, the result is PostScript output, which can be read and rendered only by PostScript-compatible applications such as a PostScript printer. See also Section 4.7.9, Generating text output Advanced Concepts 2-81

2.8.15 About creating an ASCII character-mode report

To create a character-mode report, you first create a bit-mapped report, then convert that report to an ASCII character-mode report. The process will create a new character-mode version of your bit-mapped report; the original bit-mapped report remains unchanged. After conversion, many of your fields and text objects may need to be resized. Also, graphical objects such as images and drawings will not be included in your character-mode report. The following lists summarize what is supported in each output format: See also Section 4.5.9, Creating an ASCII character-mode report Section 4.2.5, Setting properties for an ASCII character-mode report Section 4.7.1, Running and dispatching a report from the user interface

2.9 Data Sources

Oracle Reports enables you to access any data source. See Section 4.15.2, Accessing non-Oracle data sources . The topics in this section discuss information related to accessing other data sources in Oracle Reports Builder. ■ About database roles ■ About Oracle Net Services ■ About user exits ■ About the Oracle Call Interface OCI See also The Pluggable Data Sources section of the Oracle Reports online Help, including the topics: ■ About pluggable data sources ■ Adding a pluggable data source ■ Connecting to a pluggable data source ■ Adding online Help to a pluggable data source Table 2–4 Supported items in bit-mapped and character-mode reports Bit-mapped Character-mode Images Boxes Colors Horizontal lines Drawings Vertical lines EllipsesCircles ASCII text Italicized text Boldface text Diagonal lines Underlines Bit-mapped patterns Multimedia objects