About Enhanced Spreadsheet output

2-76 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports Figure 2–11 Delimited output of boilerplate outside matrix Restrictions ■ If the text file contains a field labeled ID in uppercase as the first field, you will be unable to open the file in Microsoft Excel. The following delimited output causes an error in Excel: ID, name, title, dept If you want to generate delimited output that contains an ID field, try changing the database column name to lowercase that is, id, or re-arranging the order of the fields. ■ Report distribution and bursting do not support Delimited output format. You cannot specify DELIMITED as an output format in a distribution XML file or in the Distribution dialog box. Note : You can distribute and burst a report in DelimitedData output format, specified either in a distribution XML file or in the Distribution dialog box. See also Section 4.7.10, Generating delimited output Section 4.7.1, Running and dispatching a report from the user interface Section 1.2.2, About Web Reports

2.8.13 About Enhanced Spreadsheet output

Oracle Reports 11g Release 1 11.1.1 introduces a new spreadsheet output format, ENHANCEDSPREADSHEET, which enables you to burst and distribute reports to the spreadsheet format, as well as generate large data sets up to 75,000 rows to spreadsheets. ENHANCEDSPREADSHEET output formats generate output from paper layout report to HTML files that can be directly opened with Microsoft Excel 2000. You can: ■ Generate report output to spreadsheet format from existing paper layout reports saved in any format .rdf, .xml, .jsp, using rwrun or Reports Server clients rwclient, rwservlet. See the Example below. ■ Preserve the rich layout formatting such as colors, fonts, conditional formatting, graphs, and images. Advanced Concepts 2-77 Prerequisites ■ Microsoft Excel 2000 or higher on the client machine for viewing the output. Note that this software is not needed on the machine where Oracle Reports Services is running. Usage notes ■ Enhanced Spreadsheet output requires more memory than DelimitedData output. This is an important consideration for long-running and large reports. ■ To change the name of the output worksheet, set the reports Title property. ■ Only bitmapped reports can be generated to spreadsheet output; you cannot generate a character-mode report to Enhanced Spreadsheet output. ■ The following paper layout objects are supported in Enhanced Spreadsheet output: – text boilerplate and field – images any format, including images that are imported, linked, or stored in the database – imported drawings, as well as CGM and OWF drawings – graphic lines ■ The following paper layout objects are not supported in Spreadsheet output: graphic arc, polygon, rectangle, rounded rectangle, stretchable line, and OLE external object for reports developed prior to Oracle9i Reports 9.0.2 . Space for these drawn objects is reserved, but there is no visible representation in the output. This limitation does not apply to horizontal lines. ■ The following font attributes are supported in Spreadsheet output: size, face, color, style italic, oblique, underline, overstrike, outline, shadow, weight bold, normal, extra bold, ultra bold. ■ The following Web report properties are supported in Spreadsheet output: – Hyperlink property – Hyperlink Destination property – Additional Attributes HTML property for Parameter Form fields – Table Attributes HTML property for frames and repeating frames – Alternative Text property for images – Contains HTML Tags property for boilerplate text or field objects that include HTML tags ■ The following report taxonomy properties are supported in spreadsheet output: Note: DESFORMAT=ENHANCEDSPREADSHEET behavior is the same as the functionality of the rw:include JSP tag. Enhanced Spreadsheet output is not paginated; no page setup information is written in the output, and it is formatted as a single worksheet. Enhanced Spreadsheet output is driven by the layout; the reports ouput displays objects that are in the body area of each section Header, Main, and Trailer of the paper layout, and does not format any content in the margin, header, or footer areas. 2-78 Oracle Reports Users Guide to Building Reports – Title property – Author property – Subject property – Keywords property ■ Graphs embedded in Spreadsheet output are static image files, and are not interactive. Thus, the Graph Hyperlink property is not supported in Spreadsheet output. ■ For reports that support globalization, the metadata for direction and charset must be provided in a before report escape, because this information is not written to the generated output, by default. For example, you can define a before report escape as follows: html META HTTP-EQUIV=Content-Type CONTENT=texthtml; charset=encoding body dir=Direction bgcolor=ffffff ■ The frames and repeating frames defined in the paper layout are translated to tables in the output. You can specify table attributes such as cellspacing, cellpadding, and width using the Table Attributes HTML property for frames and repeating frames. ■ For reliable formatting of spreadsheet output, the whole layout area should be enclosed in a frame. This prevents the possibility of parallel objects displaying in different vertical positions, one below the other. ■ The order of the report sections Header, Main, and Trailer is preserved in spreadsheet output; that is, the Header section output appears first, followed by the Main section, followed by the Trailer section. ■ If boilerplate objects or fields are not contiguous to each other; that is, if there is a gap between their boundaries, this might result in empty cells in the spreadsheet output. ■ If your report defines conditions that may change cell positions when the report is formatted, these changes are not reflected in spreadsheet output format. For example, if a report defines a condition that causes column 2 to display at the position of column 1 when column 1 is empty, Spreadsheet output will always display both columns, even when the condition is met. Oracle Reports generates the HTML table that forms the spreadsheet immediately after the report is compiled, not during formatting. During formatting of spreadsheet output, the table cells are filled with values. ■ The Oracle Reports color palette is used while designing the report. When you generate your report output to spreadsheet output, Microsoft Excel will show the closest matching color from its color palette. ■ If you rotate a boilerplate object in the paper layout, the object will appear horizontal in the spreadsheet output. ■ The following cell properties are not supported in spreadsheet output: background pattern, border color, and border pattern. ■ Images included in the paper layout of the report will appear in the spreadsheet output only if the Reports Server is running in non-secure mode. In the case of a secure Reports Server, images will not appear in the spreadsheet output. This is because generating images in the output involves multiple calls to the Reports Server one call per image. Once the user is authenticated, Oracle Reports passes the users identity between the browser and the secure Reports Server using Advanced Concepts 2-79 cookies. However, Excel does not support cookies. As a result, the call to the secure Reports Server seems like a call from a non-authenticated user. Thus, the Reports Server refuses to pass on the images. As a workaround, you can generate the spreadsheet output from a secure Reports Server to a URL using WebDAV. ■ Summary and formula columns will be shown as values, not as dynamic Excel formulas. Also, the page-level summary columns are reduced to report-level summary columns, since there is no page concept in Excel. ■ If you set the Vertical Elasticity property of a frame to Fixed, the output in Excel will show only as many records as could appear on the first page of the paper output. Since Excel does not have a page concept, it is not able to overflow the remaining rows to the next page. ■ Since spreadsheet output is not paginated, only the before report escape and after report escape are supported see Section 2.2.10, About before and after escapes . ■ In an after report escape, adding an HTML command outside the body does not reflect when the report is generated to spreadsheet output, even though the HTML command is written in output properly. For example: body tabletrtdB the text to be bolded Btdtrtable html Adding the HTML command before the closing body tag reflects correctly when the report is generated to spreadsheet output. For example: tabletrtdB the text to be bolded Btdtrtablebodyhtml ■ Spreadsheet format is supported in rwservlet commands such as SHOWJOBS. It is also supported in Enterprise Managers job queue, and in Oracle Portals access object definition. ■ You can distribute a report in Enhanced spreadsheet output format, specified in a distribution XML file. Restrictions ■ XML-based bursting is supported in ENHANCEDSPREADSHEET output format only. Example To generate the paper layout of your report to Microsoft Excel output through a URL using rwservlet, you can type a URL that includes the following in your browser: http:hostname:portreportsrwservlet?report=report_name +server=server_name+userid=db_connect_string+destype=file +desformat=Enhancedspreadsheet+desname=C:\temp\myexcel_output.htm Other capabilities for generating Spreadsheet Output You can also generate spreadsheet output as implemented in releases prior to Oracle Reports 11g Release 1 11.1.1, in the following ways: Note: Microsoft Office 200020022003 supports Hypertext Markup Language HTML as a native file format. Enhanced Spreadsheet output relies on producing HTML output, which can be understood by Microsoft Excel as a file with valid Excel format. 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