About Web Reports Reports

1-4 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports

1.2.2 About Web Reports

With a focus on Web publishing, Oracle Reports has moved more fully into its role as a universal publishing solution. In prior releases, Oracle Reports Builders Web feature simply displayed paper reports that is, multiple pages in HTML or PDF. This moves corporate data onto the Web, but also results in large and somewhat inflexible HTML pages. While all the prior Web report functionality remains for paper-based reports see Section 4.6.10, Adding Web links to paper-based reports , Oracle Reports can also use JavaServer Pages JSPs as the underlying technology to enable you to enhance Web pages with information retrieved using Oracle Reports Builder. This introduces the Web Source view of a report, and enables you to have both JSP-based and paper-based definitions in a single report. In other words, you can either publish your paper reports to the Web in various output formats, or take more advantage of Web features by adding JSP coding in the Web Source view. For example, you can create a report that has a paper PDF version and a JSP-based Web version; what you choose depends on your needs and whether you are able to produce the desired results more easily in the Web Source view or in the Paper Design view. Oracle Reports also includes servlet technology. Servlets provide a Java-based alternative to CGI programs. Servlets provide a platform-independent method for building Web-based applications, without the performance limitations of CGI programs. You can create a Web report in any of the following ways: ■ In the Report Wizard, select whether the report layout is both Web and paper, Web only, or paper only. The layout for both Web and paper reports defaults in the Paper Design view. You can view the source code for the Web report in the Web Source view. ■ Open an existing HTML document Web page and imbed a report in your Web page using the Report Block Wizard. This provides tremendous flexibility in creating reports that meet the demands of completely integrating multiple sources of information within a single Web page. See Section 4.6.4, Adding a report block to a Web page . ■ Display the Web Source view see Section 4.6.2, Viewing the source code for a Web report and manually insert the Oracle Reports custom JSP tags. See the topic Oracle Reports JSP tags in the Reference section of the Oracle Reports online Help. ■ Insert an existing report into an existing Web page, by displaying the Web Source view for the report and source code of the Web page, then copying and pasting the report block into the desired position in the Web page. ■ Use the functionality available since Oracle Reports 6i to add HTML and hyperlinks to an existing report to create a paper-based Web report HTML file. See Section 4.6.10, Adding Web links to paper-based reports . To preview your report output in a Web browser, use Program Run Web Layout. This enables you to immediately see the effect of your changes on the output. Basic Concepts 1-5 See also Section 2.2, Web Reports Section 1.9.4, About Parameter Forms for Web reports