These docs focus on the out of the box integration. Where Siebel holds the reins and just sends the BI Publiser server publishing requests. For this you use Integration Objects to generate the data. This support doc contains a white paper on performance testing of the IOs and provides some standard tests that you can compare your system to.

Siebel CRM BI Publisher Integration Performance[Article ID 1466709.1]

I have pulled the white paper out of support to save you some time (cos Im kind like that.) Of course the latest and greatest will be on http://support.oracle.com

The following support doc covers the tuning of said objects to handle larger data sets.

Improving the performance of Siebel BI Publisher Report Generation (Doc ID 1392449.1)

I have linked a converted PDF of the doc as of today, access http://support.oracle com and search via the Doc Id for the latest and greatest.

For completeness of the post, heres a link to post on the Siebel-BIP Business Service Integration.

Whoooo hoooo! Theres finally a new version of the BI Publisher Trial Edition available for download from OTN.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-publisher/downloads/index.html

11.1.1.7.1 is the imaginative release name. Nevermind your iOS7's get some blazingly fast BIP '.7.1'!

I'll be digging into some of the new features in the coming weeks!

Back in August a new Oracle mobile solution jumped out of the gate, the Mobile App Designer (MAD). I seem to have been on the road every week for the last, goodness knows how many weeks. I have finally found some time this week to get down and work with it. Its pretty cool and above all, its capable of providing a mobile platform independent reporting solution.

But you already have a mobile application! Yep, and I think they both sit quite comfortably together. The Oracle BI Mobile Application is available from the App Store for Apple users. Its a great app, build reports, dashboards and BIP reports for your browser based users and your Apple app users can take advantage of them immediately.

MAD takes the next step forward. Maybe you don't use or can not use Apple mobile devices? Maybe you need to build something more specific around a business area that provides users with a richer experience, beyond what Answers and Dashboards can offer. However, you do not want to have to rely of the tech folks to build the mobile application, thats just piling more work on them. You also want to be platform agnostic, you might have a mix of mobile platforms. MAD can help.

For those of you that have already used the Online Template layout editor with BI Publisher, you already know how to build a mobile application. The MAD interface is essentially the online template builder user interface, tweaked for a mobile destination ie a phone or tablet.

You build your data model as you would normally including the newer direct data model build on a subject area from OBIEE.

Then start to create the 'pages' of your application and the content to sit on those pages. All the normal stuff, tables, pivot tables, charts, images plus accordians, filters and repeating objects. On top of that is the ability to then extend the visual objects that are available to users. Maps (google or oracle), D3 visuals, gantt charts, org charts, if you can either write the code or leverage an existing javascript library, MAD has the extension framework to support it.

You can build and test in a browser and then deploy to your own BI App Store. Users, on their mobile devices, can then subscribe to an application. They can open and interact with your app using their phone or tablet's interactive features just as they would with a native application.  As you update your app and add new features the changes will be picked up the next time your users open the application.

Interested? Want to know more? The Oracle MAD home page has a ton of content including tutorials, etc. We are planning to dig into MAD in forthcoming posts. The geek in me wanted to be able to build plugins using the D3 and other visuals. I have been working with Leslie on some of the documentation and we'll be sharing some of that 'plugin' doc and how tos in the coming weeks.

Back in the 10g release, if you wanted something beyond the standard query for your report extract; you needed to break out your favorite text editor. You gotta love 'vi' and hate emacs, am I right? And get to building a data template, they were/are lovely to write, such fun ... not! Its not fun writing them by hand but, you do get to do some cool stuff around the data extract including dynamic SQL. By that I mean the ability to add content dynamically to your your query at runtime.

With 11g, we spoiled you with a visual builder, no more vi or notepad sessions, a friendly drag and drop interface allowing you to build hierarchical data sets, calculated columns, summary columns, etc. You can still create the dynamic SQL statements, its not so well documented right now, in lieu of doc updates here's the skinny.

If you check out the 10g process to create dynamic sql in the docs. You need to create a data trigger function where you assign the dynamic sql to a global variable that's matched in your report SQL. In 11g, the process is really the same, BI Publisher just provides a bit more help to define what trigger code needs to be called. You still need to create the function and place it inside a package in the db.

Here's a simple plsql package with the 'beforedata' function trigger.

Spec

create or replace PACKAGE BIREPORTS AS 

 whereCols varchar2(2000);
 FUNCTION beforeReportTrig return boolean;

end BIREPORTS;

Body

create or replace PACKAGE BODY BIREPORTS AS  FUNCTION beforeReportTrig return boolean AS    BEGIN      whereCols := ' and d.department_id = 100';      RETURN true;   END beforeReportTrig;

END BIREPORTS;

you'll notice the additional where clause (whereCols - declared as a public variable) is hard coded. I'll cover parameterizing that in my next post. If you can not wait, check the 10g docs for an example.

I have my package compiling successfully in the db. Now, onto the BIP data model definition.

1. Create a new data model and go ahead and create your query(s) as you would normally.

2. In the query dialog box, add in the variables you want replaced at runtime using an ampersand rather than a colon e.g. &whereCols.

select     d.DEPARTMENT_NAME,
... from    "OE"."EMPLOYEES" e,    "OE"."DEPARTMENTS" d  where   d."DEPARTMENT_ID"= e."DEPARTMENT_ID"&whereCols

Note that 'whereCols' matches the global variable name in our package. When you click OK to clear the dialog, you'll be asked for a default value for the variable, just use ' and 1=1' That leading space is important to keep the SQL valid ie required whitespace. This value will be used for the where clause if case its not set by the function code.

3. Now click on the Event Triggers tree node and create a new trigger of the type Before Data. Type in the default package name, in my example, 'BIREPORTS'. Then hit the update button to get BIP to fetch the valid functions.
In my case I get to see the following:

Select the BEFOREREPORTTRIG function (or your name) and shuttle it across.

4. Save your data model and now test it. For now, you can update the where clause via the plsql package.

Next time ... parametrizing the dynamic clause.

Being some what follicly challenged, and to my wife's utter relief, the comb over is not something I have ever considered. The title is a tenuous reference to a formatting feature that Adobe offers in their PDF documents.

The comb provides the ability to equally space a string of characters on a pre-defined form layout so that it fits neatly in the area. See the numbers above are being spaced correctly. Its not a function of the font but a property of the form field.

For the first time, in a long time I had the chance to build a PDF template today to help out a colleague. I spotted the property and thought, hey, lets give it a whirl and see in Publisher supports it? Low and behold, Publisher handles the comb spacing in its PDF outputs. Exciting eh? OK, maybe not that exciting but I was very pleasantly surprise to see it working.

I am reliably informed, by Leslie, BIP Evangelist and Tech Writer that, this feature was introduced from version 10.1.3.4.2 onwards.

Official docs and no mention of comb overs here.

Happy Combing!

Bit of a corner case this week but I wanted to park this as much for my reference as yours. Need to be able to test a pure XSL template against some sample data? Thats an XSL template that is going to generate HTML, Text or HTML. The Template Viewer app in the BI Publisher Desktop group does not offer that as an option.

A few minutes digging around in the java libraries and I came up with a command line solution that is easy to set up and use.

1. Place your sample XML data and the XSL template in a directory
2. Open the lib directory where the TemplateViewer is installed. On my machine that is d:\Oracle\BIPDesktop\TemplateViewer\lib
3. Copy the xmlparserv2.jar file into the directory created in step 1.
4. Use the following command in a DOS/Shell window to process the XSL template against the XML data.

java -cp ./xmlparserv2.jar oracle.xml.parser.v2.oraxsl fileX.xml fileY.xsl > fileX.xls

How can you conditionally turn cells borders on and off in Publishers RTF/XSLFO templates? With a little digging you'll find what appears to be the appropriate attributes to update in your template. You would logically come up with using the various border styling options:

border-top|bottom|left|right-width
border-top|bottom|left|right-style
border-top|bottom|left|right-color

Buuuut, that doesnt work. Updating them individually does not make a difference to the output. Not sure why and I will ask but for now here's the solution. Use the compound border formatter border-top|bottom|left|right. This takes the form ' border-bottom="0.5pt solid #000000". You set all three options at once rather than individually. In a BIP template you use:

<?if:DEPT='Accounting'?><?attribute@incontext:border-bottom;'3.0pt solid #000000'?><?attribute@incontext:border-top;'3.0pt solid #000000'?><?attribute@incontext:border-left;'3.0pt solid #000000'?><?attribute@incontext:border-right;'3.0pt solid #000000'?><?end if?>

3pt borders is a little excessive but you get the idea. This approach can be used with the if@row option too to get the complete row borders to update. If your template will need to be run in left to right languages e.g. Arabic or Hebrew, then you will need to use start and end in place of left and right.

For the inquisitive reader, you're maybe wondering how, did this guy know that? And why the heck is this not in the user docs?
Other than my all knowing BIP guru status ;0) I hit the web for info on XSLFO cell border attributes and then the Template Builder for Word. Particularly the export option; I generated the XSLFO output from a test RTF template and took a look at the attributes. Then I started trying stuff out, Im a hacker and proud me!  For the users doc updates, I'll log a request for an update.

This is a great overview of the Financial Statement Generator (FSG) engine from GL in EBS and how Publisher fits into the picture.Thanks to Helle Hellings on the Financials PM team.

Happy New ... err .. Chinese Year! Yeah, its been a while, its also been danged busy and we're only in February, just! A question came up on one of our internal mailing lists concerning out of memory errors. Pieter, support guru extraordinaire jumped on it with reference to a support note covering the relatively new 'BI Publisher Memory Guard'. Sounds grand eh?

As many a BIP user knows, at BIP's heart lives an XSLT engine. XSLT engines are notoriously memory hungry. Oracle's wee beastie has come a long way in terms of taming its appetite for bits and bytes since we started using it. BIP allows you to take advantage of this 'scalable mode.' Its a check box on the data model which essentially says 'XSLT engine, stop stuffing your face with memory doughnuts and get on with the salad and chicken train for this job' i.e. it gets a limited memory stack within which to work and makes use of disk, if needed, think Windows''virtual memory'.

Now that switch is all well and good, for a known big report that you would typically mark as 'schedule only.' You do not want users sitting in front of their screen waiting for a 10,000 page document to appear, right? How about those reports that are borderline 'big' or you have a potentially big report but expect users to filter the heck out of it and they choose not to? It would be nice to be able to set some limits on reports in case a user kicks off a monster donut binge session. Enter 'BI Publisher Memory Guard'!

It essentially lets you set those limits on memory and report size so that users can not run a report that brings the server to its knees. More information on the support web site, search for 'BI Publisher Memory Guard a New Feature to Prevent out-of-memory Errors (Doc ID 1599935.1)' or you can get Leslie's white paper covering the same here.

Since we introduced support for check printing PCL escape sequences in 11.1.1.7 i.e. being able to set the micr font or change the print cartridge to the magnetic ink for that string. I have wanted to test out other PCL commands, particularly, changing print trays. Say you have letter headed paper or pre-printed or colored paper in tray 2 but only want to use it for the first page or specific or for a separator page, the rest can come out of plain ol Tray 1 with its copier paper.

I have had a couple of inquiries recently and so, I finally took some time to test out the theory. I should add here, that the dev team thought it would work but were not 100%. The feature was built for the check printing requirements alone so they could not support any other commands. I was hopeful thou!
In short, it works!



I can generate a document and print it with embedded PCL commands to change from Tray 1 (&l4H) to Tray 2 (&l1H ) - yep, makes no sense to me either. I got the codes from here, useful site with a host of other possibilities to test.

For the test, I just created a department-employee listing that broke the page when the department changed. Just inside the first grouping loop I included the PCL string to set Tray 1.

<pcl><control><esc/>&l4H </control> </pcl>

Note, this has to be in clear text, you can not use a formfield.
I then created a dummy insert page using a template and called it from just within the closing department group field (InsertPAGE field.) At the beginning of the dummy page I included the PCL string to get the paper from Tray 2:

<pcl><control><esc/>&l1H</control> </pcl>

When you run this to PDF you will see the PCL string. I played with this and hid it using a white font and it worked great, assuming you have white paper :)

When you set up the printer in the BIP admin console, you need to ensure you have picked the 'PDF to PCL Filter' for the printer.



If you dont want to have PCL enabled all the time, you can have multiple definitions for the same printer with/with out the PCL filter. Users just need to pick the appropriate printer instance. Using this filter ensures that those PCL strings will be preserved into the final PCL that gets sent to the printer.

Example files here. Official documentation on the PCL string here.

Happy Printing!

A customer question this week regarding filtering a chart. They have a report with a bunch of criteria with monetary values but, rather than show all of the criteria in a pie chart, they just want to show a few. For example:

This ...	rather than this

 There are a couple of ways to tackle this:

1. Filter the chart data in the chart definition. Using an XPATH expression you can filter out all of the criteria you do not want to see. Open the chart definition and update the definition. You will need to update the RowCount, RowLabels and DataValues attributes in the chart definition. Adding in the following XPATH expression:

    [DEPARTMENT_NAME='Accounting' or DEPARTMENT_NAME='Marketing' or DEPARTMENT_NAME='Executive']

so the DataValues value becomes:

    <DataValues><xsl:for-each-group select=".//G_1[DEPARTMENT_NAME='Accounting' or 
                                                     DEPARTMENT_NAME='Marketing' or 
                                                        DEPARTMENT_NAME='Executive']" ...

2. Create a variable in the template to hold just the values you want to chart.

    <?variable: filterDepts; /DATA_DS/LIST_G_1/G_1[DEPARTMENT_NAME='Accounting' or 
                                                     DEPARTMENT_NAME='Marketing' or 
                                                       DEPARTMENT_NAME='Executive']?>

Then update the chart definition with the variable for the same three attributes above, the RowCount, RowLabels and DataValues. For example:

    <DataValues><xsl:for-each-group select="$filterDepts" ...

These both work admirably, but they both require some manual updating of the chart definition which can get fiddly and a pain to maintain. I'm also just filtering for three departments, when you get up to 5 or 6 then the XPATH starts to become a pain to maintain. Option 2 alleviates this somewhat because you only need to define the filter once to create the filtered variable.
A better option may be ...

3. Force the effort down into the data layer. Create another query in the report that just pulls the data for the chart.

LIST_G2/G_2 holds the data for the chart. Then all you need do is create a vanilla chart on that particular section of the data.

Yes, there is some overhead to re-fetch the data but this is going to be about the same if not less than the extra processing required in the template with options 1 and 2. This has another advantage, you can parametrize the criteria for the user. You can create a parameter to allow the user to select, in my case, the department(s) they want to chart.

Its simple enough to create the multi-select parameter and modify the query to filter based on the values chosen by the user.

Sample report (including data model and layout template here) just un-archive into your catalog.
RTF Template plus sample data available here.

I wrote up a method for using wildcard filtering in your layouts a while back here. I spotted a followup question on that blog post last week and thought I would try and address it using another wildcard method. 

I want to use the bi publisher to look for several conditions using a wild card. For example if I was sql it would look like this:

if name in ('%Wst','%Grt')

How can I utilize bi publisher to look for the same conditions.

This, in XPATH speak is an OR condition and we can treat it as such. In the last article I used the 'starts-with' function, its a little limiting, there is a better one, 'contains'. This is a much more powerful function that allows you to look for any string within another string. Its case insensitive so you do not need to do upper or lowering of the string you are searching to get the desired results.
Here it is in action:

For the clerks filter I use :

<?for-each-group:G_1[contains(JOB_TITLE,'Clerk')];./JOB_TITLE?>

and to find all clerks and managers, I use:

<?for-each-group:G_1[contains(JOB_TITLE,'Clerk') or contains(JOB_TITLE,'Manager')];./JOB_TITLE?>

Note that Im using re-grouping here, you can use the same XPATH with a regular for-each. Also note the lower case 'or' in the second expression. You can also use an 'and' too.

This works in 10 and 11g flavors of BIP. Sample files available here.

Great question came through the ether from Holger on waterfall charts last night.

"I know that Answers supports waterfall charts and BI Publisher does not.
Do you have a different solution approach for waterfall charts with BI Publisher (perhaps stacked bars with white areas)?
Maybe you have already implemented something similar in the past and you can send me an example."

I didnt have one to hand, but I do now. Little known fact, the Publisher chart engine is based on the Oracle Reports chart engine. Therefore, this document came straight to mind. Its awesome for chart tips and tricks. Will you have to get your hands dirty in the chart code? Yep. Will you get the chart you want with a little effort? Yep. Now, I know, I know, in this day and age, you should get waterfalls with no effort but then you'd be bored right?

First things first, for the uninitiated, what is a waterfall chart? From some kind person at Wikipedia, "The waterfall chart is normally used for understanding how an initial value is affected by a series of intermediate positive or negative values. Usually the initial and the final values are represented by whole columns, while the intermediate values are denoted by floating columns. The columns are color-coded for distinguishing between positive and negative values."

We'll get back to that last sentence later, for now lets get the basic chart working.

Checking out the Oracle Report charting doc, search for 'floating' their term for 'waterfall' and it will get you to the section on building a 'floating column chart' or in more modern parlance, a waterfall chart. If you have already got your feet wet in the dark arts world of Publisher chart XML, get on with it and get your waterfall working.

If not, read on.

When I first starting looking at this chart, I decided to ignore the 'negative values' in the definition above. Being a glass half full kind of guy I dont see negatives right :)

Without them its a pretty simple job of rendering a stacked bar chart with 4 series for the colors. One for the starting value, one for the ending value, one for the diffs (steps) and one for the base values. The base values color could be set to white but that obscures any tick lines in the chart. Better to use the transparency option from the Oracle Reports doc.

<Series id="0" borderTransparent="true" transparent="true"/> 

Pretty simple, even the data structure is reasonably easy to get working. But, the negative values was nagging at me and Holger, who I pointed at the Oracle Reports doc had come back and could not get negative values to show correctly. So I took another look. What a pain in the butt!

In the chart above (thats my first BIP waterfall maybe the first ever BIP waterfall.) I have lime green, start and finish bars; red for negative and green for positive values. Look a little closer at the hidden bar values where we transition from red to green, ah man, royal pain in the butt! Not because of anything tough in the chart definition, thats pretty straightforward. I just need the following columns START, BASE, DOWN, UP and FINISH. 

and so on. The start, up, down and finish values are reasonably easy to get. The real trick is calculating that hidden BASE value correctly for that transition from -ve >> + ve and vice versa. Hitting Google, I found the key to that calculation in a great page on building a waterfall chart in Excel from the folks at Contextures.  Excel is great at referencing previous cell values to create complex calculations and I guess I could have fudged this article and used an Excel sheet as my data source. I could even have used an Excel template against my database table to create the data for the chart and fed the resulting Excel output back into the report as the data source for the chart. But, I digress, that would be tres cool thou, gotta look at that.
On that page is the formula to get the hidden base bar values and I adapted that into some sql to get the same result.

Lets assume I have the following data in a table:

The sales values are versus the same period last year i.e. a delta value.  I have a starting value of 200 total sales, lets assume this is pulled from another table.
I have spent the majority of my time on generating the data, the actual chart definition is pretty straight forward. Getting that BASE value has been most tricksy!

I need to generate the following for each column:

Ignoring the START and END values for a second. Here's the query for the PRODx columns:

 SELECT 2 SORT_KEY 
, PRODUCT_NAME
, STRT
, SALES
, UP
, DOWN
, 0 END_TOTAL
, 200 + (SUM(LAG_UP - DOWN) OVER (ORDER BY PRODUCT_NAME)) AS BASE_VAL
FROM
(SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME
,  0 AS STRT
, P.SALES
, CASE WHEN P.SALES > 0 THEN P.SALES ELSE 0 END AS UP  
, CASE WHEN P.SALES < 0 THEN ABS(P.SALES) ELSE 0 END AS DOWN
, LAG(CASE WHEN P.SALES > 0 THEN P.SALES ELSE 0 END,1,0) 
      OVER (ORDER BY P.PRODUCT_NAME) AS LAG_UP
FROM PRODUCTS P
)

The inner query is breaking the UP and DOWN values into their own columns based on the SALES value. The LAG function is the cool bit to fetch the UP value in the previous row. That column is the key to getting the BASE values correctly.

The outer query just has a calculation for the BASE_VAL.

200 + (SUM(LAG_UP - DOWN) OVER (ORDER BY PRODUCT_NAME))

The SUM..OVER allows me to iterate over the rows to get the calculation I need ie starting value (200) + the running sum of LAG_UP - DOWN. Remember the LAG_UP value is fetching the value from the previous row.
Is there a neater way to do this? Im most sure there is, I could probably eliminate the inner query with a little effort but for the purposes of this post, its quite handy to be able to break things down.

For the start and end values I used more queries and then just UNIONed the three together. Once note on that union; the sorting. For the chart to work, I need START, PRODx, FINISH, in that order. The easiest way to get that was to add a SORT_KEY value to each query and then sort by it. So my total query for the chart was:

SELECT 1 SORT_KEY
, 'START' PRODUCT_NAME
, 200 STRT
, 0 SALES
, 0 UP
, 0 DOWN
, 0 END_TOTAL
, 0 BASE_VAL
FROM PRODUCTS
UNION
SELECT 2 SORT_KEY 
, PRODUCT_NAME
, STRT
, SALES
, UP
, DOWN
, 0 END_TOTAL
, 200 + (SUM(LAG_UP - DOWN) 
      OVER (ORDER BY PRODUCT_NAME)) AS BASE_VAL
FROM
(SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME
,  0 AS STRT
, P.SALES
, CASE WHEN P.SALES > 0 THEN P.SALES ELSE 0 END AS UP  
, CASE WHEN P.SALES < 0 THEN ABS(P.SALES) ELSE 0 END AS DOWN
, LAG(CASE WHEN P.SALES > 0 THEN P.SALES ELSE 0 END,1,0) 
       OVER (ORDER BY P.PRODUCT_NAME) AS LAG_UP
FROM PRODUCTS P
)
UNION
SELECT 3 SORT_KEY 
, 'END' PRODUCT_NAME
, 0 STRT
, 0 SALES
, 0 UP
, 0 DOWN
, SUM(SALES) + 200 END_TOTAL
, 0 BASE_VAL
FROM PRODUCTS
GROUP BY 1,2,3,4,6
ORDER BY 1 

A lot of effort for a dinky chart but now its done once, doing it again will be easier. Of course no one will want just a single chart in their report, there will be other data, tables, charts, etc. I think if I was doing this in anger I would just break out this query as a separate item in the data model ie a query just for the chart. It will make life much simpler.
Another option that I considered was to build a sub template in XSL to generate the XML tree to support the chart and assign that to a variable. Im sure it can be done with a little effort, I'll save it for another time.

On the last leg, we have the data; now to build the chart. This is actually the easy bit. Sadly I have found an issue in the online template builder that precludes using the chart builder in those templates. However, RTF templates to the rescue!

Insert a chart and in the dialog set up the data like this (click the image to see it full scale.)

Its just a vertical stacked bar with the BASE_VAL color set to white.You can still see the 'hidden' bars and they are over writing the tick lines but if you are happy with it, leave it as is. You can double click the chart and the dialog box can read it no problem. If however, you want those 'hidden' bars truly hidden then click on the Advanced tab of the chart dialog and replace:

<Series id="1" color="#FFFFFF" />

with

<Series id="1" borderTransparent="true" transparent="true" />

and the bars will become completely transparent. You can do the #D and gradient thang if you want and play with colors and themes. You'll then be done with your waterfall masterpiece!

Alot of work? Not really, more than out of the box for sure but hopefully, I have given you enough to decipher the data needs and how to do it at least with an Oracle db. If you need all my files, including table definition, sample XML, BIP DM, Report and templates, you can get them here.

Another great question today, this time, from friend and colleague, Jerry the master house re-fitter. I think we are competing on who can completely rip and replace their entire house in the shortest time on their own. Every conversation we have starts with 'so what are you working on?' He's in the midst of a kitchen re-fit, Im finishing off odds and ends before I re-build our stair well and start work on my hidden man cave under said stairs. Anyhoo, his question!

Can you create a PDF document that shows a summary on the first page and provides links to more detailed sections further down in the document?

Why yes you can Jerry. Something like this? Click on the department names in the first table and the return to top links in the detail sections. Pretty neat huh? Dynamic internal links based on the data, in this case the department names.

Its not that hard to do either. Here's the template, RTF only right now.

The important fields in this case are the ones in red, heres their contents.

TopLink

<fo:block id="doctop" />

Just think of it as an anchor to the top of the page called doctop

Back to Top

<fo:basic-link internal-destination="doctop" text-decoration="underline">Back to Top</fo:basic-link>

Just a live link 'Back to Top' if you will, that takes the user to the doc top location i.e. to the top of the page.

DeptLink

<fo:block id="{DEPARTMENT_NAME}"/>

Just like the TopLink above, this just creates an anchor in the document. The neat thing here is that we dynamically name it the actual value of the DEPARTMENT_NAME. Note that this link is inside the for-each:G_DEPT loop so the {DEPARTMENT_NAME} is evaluated each time the loop iterates. The curly braces force the engine to fetch the DEPARTMENT_NAME value before creating the anchor.

DEPARTMENT_NAME

<fo:basic-link  internal-destination="{DEPARTMENT_NAME}"><?DEPARTMENT_NAME?></fo:basic-link>

This is the link for the user to be able to navigate to the detail for that department. It does not use a regular MSWord URL, we have to create a field in the template to hold the department name value and apply the link. Note, no text decoration this time i.e. no underline.

You can add a dynamic link on to anything in the summary section. You just need to remember to keep link 'names' as unique as needed for source and destination. You can combine multiple data values into the link name using the concat function.

Template and data available here. Tested with 10 and 11g, will work with all BIP flavors.

Yeah, its been a while, moving on ...

I got a question a week back asking about how BI Publisher could handle dblinks. The customer currently has db links from DB1 to DB2 and uses them in their queries. Could BIP handle the syntax and pass it on to the database in its SQL or could it handle the link another way?

select e1.emp_name
, e1.emp_id
,e2.manager
from emps e1
, emps@db2 e2
where e1.manager_id = e2.id

Well, there is the obvious way to create the join in BIP. Just get rid of the db link alttogether and create two separate database connections (db1 and db2). Write query A against db1 and query B against db2. Then just create a join between the two queries, simple.

 But, what if you wanted to use the dblink? Well, BIP would choke on the @db2 you would have in the sql. Some silly security rules that, no, you can not turn off if you want to. But there are ways around it, the choking, not the security. Create an alias at the database level for the emp@db2, that way BIP can parse the resulting query. Lets assume I create an alias in the db for my db linked table as 'managers'. Now my query becomes:

select e1.emp_name
, e1.emp_id
,e2.manager
from emps e1
, managers e2
where e1.manager_id = e2.id

 BIP will not choke, it will just pass the query through and the db can handle the linking for it.

Thats it, thats all I got on db links. See you in 6 months :)

Im on a roll with posts. This blog can be rebuilt ...

I received a question today from Camilo in Colombia asking how to achieve the following.

‘What are my options to deliver excel files with multiple sheets?I know we can split 1 report in multiple sheets in with the BIP Advanced Options, but what if I want to have 1 report / sheet? Where each report in each sheet has a independent data model ….’

Well, its not going to be easy if you have to have completely separate data models for each sheet. That would require generating multiple Excel outputs and then merging them, somehow.

However, if you can live with a single data model with multiple data sets i.e. queries that connect to separate data sources. Something like this:

Then we can help. Each query is returning its own data set but they will all be presented together in a single data set that BIP can then render. Our data structure in the XML output would be:

<DS><G1>
  ...</G1><G2>
  ...</G2><G3>
  ...</G3></DS>

Three distinct data sets within the same data output.

To get each to sit on a separate sheet within the Excel output is pretty simple. It depends on how much native Excel functionality you want.

Using an RTF template you just create the layouts for each data set on a page(s) separated by a page break (Ctrl-Enter.) At runtime, BIP will place each output onto a separate sheet in the workbook. If you want to name each sheet you can use the <?spreadsheet-sheet-name:xpath-expression?> command. More info here. That’s as sophisticated as it gets with the RTF templates. No calcs, no formulas, etc. Just put the output on a sheet, bam!

Using an Excel template you can get more sophisticated with the layout.



This time thou, you create the layout for each data model on separate sheets. In my example, sheet 1 holds the department data, sheet 2, the employee data and so on. Some conditional formatting has snuck in there.

I have zipped up the sample files here.

FIN!

A tough little question appeared on one of our internal mailing lists today that piqued my interest. A customer wanted to place a border around all data fields in their BIP output. Something like this:

Naturally you think of using a table, embedding the field inside a cell and turning the cell border on. That will work but will need some finessing to get the cells to stretch or shrink depending on the width of the runtime text. Then things might get a bit squirly (technical term) if the text is wide enough to force a new line at the page edge. Anyway, it will get messy. So I took a look at the problem to see if the fields can be isolated in the page as far as the XSLFO code is concerned. If the field can be siolated in its own XSL block then we can change attribute values to get the borders to show just around the field. Sadly not.

This is an embedded field YEARPARAM in a sentence.

translates to

 <fo:inline height="0.0pt" style-name="Normal" font-size="11.0pt" style-id="s0" white-space-collapse="false"
  font-family-generic="swiss" font-family="Calibri"
  xml:space="preserve">This is an embedded field <xsl:value-of select="(.//YEARPARAM)[1]" xdofo:field-name="YEARPARAM"/> in a sentence.</fo:inline>

 This gives me the following code.

<fo:block linefeed-treatment="preserve" text-align="start" widows="2" end-indent="5.4pt" orphans="2"
 start-indent="5.4pt" height="0.0pt" padding-top="0.0pt" padding-bottom="10.0pt" xdofo:xliff-note="YEARPARAM" xdofo:line-spacing="multiple:13.8pt"> <fo:inline height="0.0pt" style-name="Normal" font-size="11.0pt" style-id="s0" white-space-collapse="false"
  font-family-generic="swiss" font-family="Calibri" xml:space="preserve">This is an embedded field </fo:inline><fo:inline height="0.0pt" style-name="Normal" font-size="11.0pt" style-id="s0" white-space-collapse="false"
   font-family-generic="swiss" font-family="Calibri" background-color="#ffff00"><xsl:attribute name="background-color">white</xsl:attribute> <xsl:value-of select="(.//YEARPARAM)[1]" xdofo:field-name="YEARPARAM"/> </fo:inline> <fo:inline height="0.0pt" style-name="Normal" font-size="11.0pt" style-id="s0" white-space-collapse="false"
  font-family-generic="swiss" font-family="Calibri" xml:space="preserve"> in a sentence.</fo:inline> </fo:block> 

Now we have the field isolated we can easily set other attributes that will only be applied to the field and nothing else. I added the following to my YEARPARAM field:

<?attribute@inline:background-color;'white'?> >>> turn the background back to white

<?attribute@inline:border-color;'black'?> >>> turn on all borders and make black

<?attribute@inline:border-width;'0.5pt'?> >>> make the border 0.5 point wide

<?YEARPARAM?> >>> my original field

The @inline tells the BIP XSL engine to only apply the attribute values to the immediate 'inline' code block i.e. the field. Collapse all of this code into a single line in the field.
When I run the template now, I see the following:

Its a little convoluted but if you ignore the geeky code explanation and just highlight/copy'n'paste, its pretty straightforward.

We have a demo environment in my team and of course things get a little beaten up in there. Our go to, 'here's Publisher' report was looking really bad. Data was not returning or being rendered correctly on the five templates we have for it.
So, I spent about a half hour cleaning up the report; getting things working again; clearing out the rubbish. I noticed that one of the layouts when rendered in HTML was repeatedly showing a header down the screen. Oh, I know where to get rid of that and off I click to the report properties to fix it. But what is this I see? Is it? Can it be? Are my tired old eyes deceiving me?

Yes, Dexter, you see that right, 'View Paginated'! I nervously changed the value to 'true' and went back to the HTML output.
Holy Amaze Balls Batman, paginated HTML, the holy grail of HTML rendered reports, the Mount Everest of ... no, thats too easy, the K2 of html output ... its fan-bloody-tastic! Can you tell Im excited? I was immediately on messenger to Leslie (doc writer extraordinaire) 

Obviously not quite as big a deal in the sane, real world outside of my head. 'Oh yeah, we have that now ...' Leslie is so calm and collected, however, she does like Maroon 5 but, we overlook that :)

I command you 11.1.1.6+'ers to go find the property and turn it on right now and bask in the glory that is, 'paginated html.!'
I cannot stop clicking back and forth and then to the end and then all the way back to the beginning. Its fantastic!

Just look at those icons, just click em, you know you want to!

 Today's post comes to you from Brent at STR Software. If you could help out, it would be greatly appreciated, read on ...

First off, if you are not familiar with the term SIG, it stands for Special Interest Group.OAUG facilitates a number of SIGs to bring users together that share common or industries concerning certain Oracle products.

Unfortunately, the BI Publisher SIG has been offline for a number of years and has not been given the attention it needs to be a useful resource for members of OAUG. Well... I'm getting the band back together and I need your help!

The SIG itself was formed to specifically focus on BI Publisher embedded in Oracle EBS, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards. I have put together a survey that is being emailed out to previous members of the SIG to get thoughts on how the SIG can be of service. That list is pretty old and YOU may not be on it, so if you are interested in participating in the SIG (or even if you are not), have a look at the link below and let me know your thoughts. Our first official meeting will be at Collaborate 15 in Las Vegas, hope to see you there!

Another messaging exchange last week with Leslie ...

OK, so we practised it a bit after our first convo and things got a little cheesy but hopefully you get the message.

Hit this link and you too can give some constructive feedback on the Oracle doc for BI (not just BIP.) I took the survey; its only eight questions or more if you want to share more of your input. Please take a couple of minutes to help us shape the documentation of future.