APEX PDF

Is there any way to use Oracle Report server to generate PDF from APEX?
Coz, we already have license for Oracle Forms and Reports Server 10g. Also our company doesn't want to invest on BI publisher or plpdf jus for pdf reports.
Any inputs on the above is very much appreciated.
Thanks and Regards,

Yes, there are a few threads here in the forum talking about using APEX & Oracle Report's...
Thank you,
Tony Miller
Webster, TX

Similar Messages

Tomcat/Cocoon/APEX PDF printing. Another issue

Hi All,
I am trying to implement my own custom report layout for the following simple Report query
select e.DEPTNO, d.DNAME, d.LOC, e.ENAME, e.JOB
from emp e, dept d
where e.deptno = d.deptno
The steps are the following
1. Create Report Query
2. Download XML file
3. Use Stylus Studio to create XSL-FO (XSLT 2.0) based on XML data downloaded in
previous step.
4. Go back to Report query and upload XSL-FO file to APEX (layout name 'MyLayout' is also specified).
Finish Report Query creation
5. Enter Report Query again, select report layout 'MyLayout' and select Test Report
The result is a failure with some java cocoon exception:
org.apache.cocoon.ProcessingException: Unknown request object encountered named template : null
Cocoon stacktrace[hide]
Exception in StreamGenerator.generate() context://fop_post/sitemap.xmap - 17:32 <map:serialize type="xml">
context://fop_post/sitemap.xmap - 13:33 <map:generate type="stream">
Unable to get transformer handler for cocoon://fop_post/xsl context://fop_post/sitemap.xmap - 38:37 <map:serialize type="fo2pdf">
context://fop_post/sitemap.xmap - 31:39 <map:transform>
context://fop_post/sitemap.xmap - 30:38 <map:generate>
context://sitemap.xmap - 1034:92 <map:mount>
It seems to me that XSL-FO that I created for this layout is rejected somehow by APEX and not passed to Coccon at all.
Guys, what am I doing wrong ? I will appreciate any help.
Regards,
Vadim

Hi Mike,
My standard printing is working nicely. That's the custom reporting that I experience problems with.
After 8 hours of googling and 4 cups of coffee I figured out where the problem was. When you define XSL-FO file you need to 'escape' every occurence of % sign. For example you cannot define width= "100%" because APEX will pass this unchanged to Tomcat and Tomcat in turn will reject this but still passing NULL template pointer to Cocoon. Taking into consideration very poor logging capabilities one can spend hours trying to fugure out what is hapenning. APEX should be smart enough to escape characters or at least there should be a doco somewhere listing the rules you need to follow whem creating FO stylesheets.
I must admit that the whole APEX PDF printing using Tomcat/Cocoon (and probably Fop because that's what used by Cocoon behind the scene anyway) is unfortunately a hack. Reporting does not have to be that complex.
I would be extremely grateful if somebody can tell me what sort of XML tool is best suited to generate XSL-FO files that can be easily understood by APEX/Tomcat/Cocoon.
Regards,
Vadim

APEX,PDF's, BI Publisher and SQL Query returning SQL code..

I don't know if I should be posting this in this Forum or the BI Publisher forum, so I am posting in BOTH forums..
I love APEX, let me say that first.. And appreciate the support offered here by the group, but am running int a confusing issue when BI Publisher tries to build a report from the above type APEX report..
Here is my dilemma:
I have a number of reports that are part of a Oracle package. They return an SQL Query back to a reports region on a page. I am having to deal with the column names returned are col01, col02..
The issue I have is, when building the Application Level query to download the XML sample from in building RTF layouts in Word, you can not use this code, you MUST use a standard SQL Select.
I have taken the sql from the function returning sql, and copied into the application query, supplying the required data values for bind variables being used in the query.
An XML file is produced, and I use this to build the RTF format file that I load back into APEX and try to use it for the PDF rendering of the report. I can view the output as a PDF in the Word add on, but when I try using it with the report, it is returning an empty PDF file.
Can anyone tell me what error log files on the bi publisher side I can look at to see what error is happening?
Thank you,
Tony Miller
UTMB/EHN
Title adjusted to allow people to know what I am talking about...
Message was edited by:
Tony Miller

Tony,
You can find the log as follows:
- go to http://[yourserver]:[yourport]/em
- logon to OC4J EM: oc4jadmin/[yourpassword]
- click on "logs" at the bottom of the page
- in the hgrid/tree, expand OC4J->home->Application
xmlpserver
- click on view log icon
You can also observe what's going on in BI Publisher
by going to the command prompt from where you started
it.
Or, as a third option, you can locate the file on
your file system, depending on your setup, the path
would be something similar to this:
\oracle\product\10.2.0\bip\j2ee\home\application-deplo
yments\xmlpserver\application.log
With that said though, I don't expect you'll find
much in there that would help with your particular
problem. I suspect you either get no rows in your XML
at runtime, due to some session state issues, or your
XML structure does in fact not match your RTF
template.
I'm not quite following your problem description,
i.e. when did you do what and are you associating
your report layout with a report query or report
region. So just some general notes, your query needs
to be parseable at design-time, when exporting the
XML, so that you get the XML file with the proper
column names derived from your query. If you want to
use your RTF template with a standard report region,
you must export the XML file first using the advanced
XML structure option. And of course the column names
in your report query need to match the column names
in your report region.
Perhaps this helps you further diagnose what's going
on, if you have additional information that could
help, let me know. And if you could stage this on
apex.oracle.com, I'd be happy to take a look.
Regards,
MarcMarc,
Thanks for looking at this issue. Below find my remarks to your questions..
Re: your query needs
to be parseable at design-time, when exporting the
XML, so that you get the XML file with the proper
column names derived from your query.At the start of this process, the query code was a function in a package. The function was returning an SQL select statement, for a report region on a page. I took the select statement, built an application query to build a sample of the xml for BI Publisher desktop (Add-on for Word). The code was producing the usual Col01, Col02.. since at design time that is were the column names.
When I then took the xml from this and built the rtf for loading into my APEX application.
When testing the Application Query with this RTF report layout, I am getting PDF's. When using it with the report region sending an xml feed to BI Publisher I am getting nothing back.
I have since taken the sql code and moved it back into the report region, and set the region to have a type of straight SQL Query. I have even tried to hard-code the parameters I was getting from the page to limit data returned.
Is it possible to see the xml being produced by the APEX page?
Re: Stage this on apex.oracle.com.. I would love to, but we would have HIPPA issues if I posted the data on a public website.
Can I send you the RTF file and the xml file that the application query is creating to see if there something weird about them?
Thank you,
Tony Miller
UTMB/EHN

Problems with FOP/Apache - Apex PDF printing

Hello,
I have configured
Apex 3.0.1
iAS 10.1.3.x (http + modplsql)
OC4J 10.1.3.3 (stand alone)
FOP for PDF printing
RDBMS 9.2.0.8 64bits (Solaris)
following the OTN recipee and this setup does not seem to work for all cases.
For instance, using the Apex admin interface, I go to the monitoring page :
Home -> Monitor Page -> Login Attempts
And click on the Print link (left bottom corner of the page) , it works o.k, the PDF is generated correctly.
However, if I go to
Home -> utilities -> Object Reports -> Table Storage Sizes
and click on the Print link, it does not work. A pdf file is generated with the following text
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>500 Internal Server Error</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY><H1>500 Internal Server Error</H1>
<PRE>Servlet error: An exception occurred. The current application deployment descriptors do not allow for including it in this response. Please consult the application log for details.</PRE>
</BODY>
</HTML>
If I check in the application log I see the following error
07/08/08 11:52:21.584 fop: Servlet error
oracle.xml.xpath.XPathException: Error in expression: './/BYTES/1024/1024'.
at oracle.xml.xslt.XSLBuilder.startElement(XSLBuilder.java:468)
at oracle.xml.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseElement(NonValidatingParser.java:1288)
at oracle.xml.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseRootElement(NonValidatingParser.java:336)
at oracle.xml.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseDocument(NonValidatingParser.java:303)
at oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:320)
at oracle.xml.xslt.XSLProcessor.newXSLStylesheet(XSLProcessor.java:712)
at oracle.xml.xslt.XSLStylesheet.<init>(XSLStylesheet.java:321)
at oracle.xml.parser.v2.XSLStylesheet.<init>(XSLStylesheet.java:114)
at apex_fop._jspService(_apex__fop.java:71)
at com.orionserver[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].http.OrionHttpJspPage.service(OrionHttpJspPage.java:59)
at oracle.jsp.runtimev2.JspPageTable.service(JspPageTable.java:462)
at oracle.jsp.runtimev2.JspServlet.internalService(JspServlet.java:594)
at oracle.jsp.runtimev2.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:518)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:856)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].server.http.ServletRequestDispatcher.invoke(ServletRequestDispatcher.java:713)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].server.http.ServletRequestDispatcher.forwardInternal(ServletRequestDispatcher.java:370)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].server.http.HttpRequestHandler.doProcessRequest(HttpRequestHandler.java:871)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].server.http.HttpRequestHandler.processRequest(HttpRequestHandler.java:453)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].server.http.HttpRequestHandler.serveOneRequest(HttpRequestHandler.java:221)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].server.http.HttpRequestHandler.run(HttpRequestHandler.java:122)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].server.http.HttpRequestHandler.run(HttpRequestHandler.java:111)
at oracle.oc4j.network.ServerSocketReadHandler$SafeRunnable.run(ServerSocketReadHandler.java:260)
at oracle.oc4j.network.ServerSocketAcceptHandler.procClientSocket(ServerSocketAcceptHandler.java:239)
at oracle.oc4j.network.ServerSocketAcceptHandler.access$700(ServerSocketAcceptHandler.java:34)
at oracle.oc4j.network.ServerSocketAcceptHandler$AcceptHandlerHorse.run(ServerSocketAcceptHandler.java:880)
at com.evermind[Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.3.0) ].util.ReleasableResourcePooledExecutor$MyWorker.run(ReleasableResourcePooledExecutor.java:298)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)
I do not think it is related to a config/installation issue. It seems a parsing issue with the SQL stmt being executed, but it works for some SQL code and not for other.
Some users did notice this problem this morning when testing the new PDF printing.
Any ideas ?
Nilo Segura
CERN.

ups.. sorry for the ugly formatting exercise...

APEX PDF Printing with DEfault OC4J in 11g

Hi,
is it possible to use the default oc4j installation that comes with 11g for PDF printing ?
I tried http://127.0.0.1:8888/ that worked
but http://127.0.0.1:8888/em failed
The examples (available from the start-page) /examples/jsp doesn´t work also.
Thanks
Marco

Hello,
What do you mean by -
but http://127.0.0.1:8888/em failed
failed how exactly?
John.
http://jes.blogs.shellprompt.net
http://www.apex-evangelists.com

Altova StyleVision 2013 - APEX PDF Report

Hello,
I read this tutorial for create report : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex/learnmore/custom-pdf-reports-1953918.pdf
But I have a problem when I create report for APEX with Altova StyleVision.
I use Oracle XE 11gR2, APEX 4.2 and APEX Listener 2.0.4.
In APEX, I created a state with 14 queries, and I exported in XML format.
I can built four tables (from 4 different queries / rowset) in my report, and PDF printing works.
But I have a problem when I want to add a fifth query (table) in my report :
When I generate the PDF document from my APEX application, I have the following error message :
"Error displaying the error page ORA-01403: No data found ORA-06502: PL / SQL: numeric or value error"
Do you know why I get this error message when my report has 5 queries ?
The number of queries in a PDF report is limited?
Thank you very much for your help ! And sorry for my english ;-)

Thank you for your answer !
This is what I checked :
APEX is configured to print via Listener --> ok !
XSLT is the 1.0 version --> ok !
5th query actually produces data --> ok ! If I create a new Report (with Altova) with only this query, the PDF works.
Your Report is assigned to the correct Report Layout --> ok !
Making a new Report Layout in APEX using the same XSLT file --> same error !
Build a new XSLT in StyleVision using the new XML sample data --> same error !
Downloading the XML from within the Report definition (ie 'run the report but download XML instead of making PDF') --> here there is maybe an error. When I open with a text editor the xml file downloaded, it contains this : "String index out of range: -1". BUT when I do the same operation with a pdf file who works (only 4 queries), the xml file downloaded contains the same message (String index out of range: -1).
I forgot to say that I use the trial version of Altova, and my APEX Listener run in Standalone mode.
Do you have any other answer to my problem ?
Thank you very much for your help !

APEX-PDF-Reports: Add ID and some more Data to the PDF-Filename

Hi,
I have create in APEX a Report Layout and a Report Query to export some data to an PDF-File (I am using BI Publisher).
This works fine but now I need to add the ID and some other informations to the file-name.
Because if the user create some PDF-Files he should be able to see, what file is for which data...
How I can do this?
Regards,
Mark

Hi Marc,
thank you for your answer but it does not work for me.
I have create the page process and if I click the button I have for few seconds the hour-glas. I think the BI Publisher is generating the file but I dont have a download-message and also the file is not saves automatically.
This is my page process:
declare
    v_filename varchar2(1000);
begin
    v_filename := 'Checkliste_' || :P70_TECHNIK || '.pdf';
    APEX_UTIL.DOWNLOAD_PRINT_DOCUMENT (p_file_name => v_filename,
                                       p_content_disposition => 'attachment',
                                       p_application_id      => 119,
                                       p_report_query_name   => 'Checkliste',
                                       p_report_layout_name => 'Checkliste',
                                       p_report_layout_type => 'xsl-fo',
                                       p_document_format     => 'pdf');
end;I have also tried it with p_report_layout_type => 'rtf' because the layout is a rtf-file, but also no luck.
Have you a idea why I cant download the file?
Regards,
Mark

Apex PDF printing in 11g

Dear,
I have Oracle 11g and APEX in Win XP machine. EM also configured.
To get PDF printing in APEX, I should install Apache FOP.
As per the document for PDF printing configuration, I am not getting the EM console for OC4J. (for reports and forms, OC4J is available in the same machine)
So I should install Standalone OC4J (in the same machine). My doubts are
Is OC4J 10g Standalone enough for Oracle 11g? (I could not find a OC4J 11g download)
From documnets I found that this OC4J installation will install one HTTP server also. Is this conflict with any of the settings for EM or APEX?
Is the EM which will be installed with OC4J standalone conflict with already installed EM for database? Or any method is there to use the Database EM for OC4J also?
How to find out JAVA_HOME and J2EE_HOME?
All these installation I made using the OTN downloads.
with regards
-mathews

Hi Mathews
This looks much easier than the manual configuration that I had to do.
To get to the OC4J config.......
Login to your App Server EM
Depending on what tier it is you will have various system components such as HTTP_Server, Web_Cache, home etc...
Click on home, to display OC4J page
Click on Applications
Click on Deploy WAR file
You should then be able to follow the rest of the instructions in the document.
cheers,
Ron

Logo in Apex PDF report

Hi Folks,
I have created a classic report in Apex. Have enabled the print PDF link on the report for the business users to download it in a PDF format. Is is possible to put a logo in a downloaded PDF from the report?
Thanks
Harry

Hi Peter,
Note that this is a solution that I haven't tested but I have investigated it to the extent that I see no reason why it wont work.
One option to get better looking pdf reports is to go down the report queries/layouts path in the shared components part of an application . The generic pdf printing used in Apex uses a generic XSL-FO layout that can be edited or replaced. Doing this manually would be quite difficult but there are several commercial XSL-FO editors out there on the market that should make this a relatively easy task. Google "XSL-FO editor" and you will see a range of products from about $50 upwards and this is a developer license, meaning you may need only one or two licences.
Regards
Andre

Cocoon - Tomcat - APEX for FOP PDF printing

I'm trying to setup Cocoon & Tomcat with APEX 4.1 for doing PDF printing of some reports.
I'm using Linux 64bit, Tomcat 7.0.22, Cocoon 2.1.11, and JDK (build 1.6.0_24-b07).
I followed Carl Backstrom's very helpful [blog entry|http://carlback.blogspot.com/2007/03/apex-cocoon-pdf-and-more.html] about using cocoon and tomcat to produce PDF reports through APEX. However, I must just be missing something, because it's not working at all for me.
Does anyone have any suggestions about getting this to work? Whenever, I attempt to hit the cocoon site (localhost:8080/cocoon/), I receive the following error:
"org.apache.cocoon.ResourceNotFoundException: No pipeline matched request: index.html"
Whenever I attempt to download a PDF report, I receive this error:
"Adobe reader cannot open 'reportname.pdf' because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged."
If you have this configuration (cocoon, tomcat, APEX, PDF printing) working, I'd greatly appreciate it if you shared any URLs or tips you have in getting this setup. I understand why folks fork out the big $ for BI Publisher, but that's not an option for me.
Many thanks,
Reid

In the Tomcat Manager app, it shows that cocoon is deployed and running.
I was able to reload it as well:
"OK - Reloaded application at context path /cocoon"
I see this in the Tomcat log:
"SEVERE: The web application [cocoon] appears to have started a thread named [HSQLDB Timer @6b033450] but has failed to stop it. This is very likely to create a memory leak."

External-graphic not shown in PDF with Tomcat / Cocoon / Ubuntu

Hi,
this weekend I set up a virtualbox with Ubuntu 8.04 OS; APEX 3.12 @ Oracle 10gXE; Tomcat 6.014; Cocoon 2.1.11; fop_post sitemap file according to Carl Backstrom blogpost ([http://carlback.blogspot.com/2007/03/apex-cocoon-pdf-and-more.html]); to experiment with APEX & PDF printing.
Tomcat is configured to listen to port 8888; APEX to 8080.
I have setup APEX according to Carl's blogpost. All is working fine; I can generate PDF reports using the standard templates. I'm new to XSL, but decided to go wild. I decided to include a JPG graphic.
I followed the example in Scott & Spendolini, Pro Oracle Application Express, page 399. However the image is not shown in the PDF, nor is there an error message produced. What is wrong?
This is the relevant section of source code I have used:
<fo:static-content flow-name="region-footer">
<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="text footer">
<fo:inline xsl:use-attribute-sets="body-font page-number">
<fo:external-graphics width="50px" height="50px" src='url("http://www.fiat128.nl/images/fiat128.jpg")'/>
<fo:page-number/>
</fo:inline>
</fo:block>
<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="text text_2 #PAGE_FOOTER_ALIGNMENT#">
<fo:inline xsl:use-attribute-sets="page-footer">#PAGE_FOOTER#</fo:inline>
</fo:block>
</fo:static-content>
all help is appreciated. Is there a problem with Cocoon and Linux?
many regards,
Ronald van Dijk
Edited by: user614694 on Oct 6, 2008 3:09 AM
Edited by: Ronald van Dijk on Oct 6, 2008 3:10 AM

Hello Ronald,
Your code looks fine to me. Although xsl-fo is not very friendly for a slight change...
This is an example I use during my PDF printing presentation:
<fo:static-content flow-name="region-header">
<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="text text_2 text_0 #PAGE_HEADER_ALIGNMENT#">
<fo:inline xsl:use-attribute-sets="page-header">#PAGE_HEADER#</fo:inline>
</fo:block>
<fo:block border="0.5pt solid silver"
background-image="url('http://o11g1.apex-evangelists.com:7779/i/htmldb/apex_logo.gif')"
padding="12pt"
text-align="center">Apex Evangelists
</fo:block>
</fo:static-content>
Does that work for you?
(change o11g1.apex-evangelists.com:7779 to your hostname:port - and see that you get the image by using the url)
I've sometimes seen problems displaying certain pictures or specifying the width.
Regards,
Dimitri
http://dgielis.blogspot.com/
http://www.apex-evangelists.com/
http://www.apexblogs.info/

PDF with Tomcat/Cocoon Problem !!!

Hi,
I am having problem with Tomcat/Cocoon combination for APEX PDF printing which I installed following Carl Backstrom instructions.
When a report is a region report it all works fine, but when I create a report based on a query from the reports section in Shared Components choosing report layout 'Use Generic Report Layout' I get the following error.
javax.xml.transform.TransformerException: attribute-set named #TEXT_ALIGN# does not exist
cocoon://fop_post/xsl - 148:58
Cocoon stacktrace[hide]
attribute-set named #TEXT_ALIGN# does not exist
cocoon://fop_post/xsl - 148:58
I will appreciate any feedback. I saw threads related to the same issue on this forum but they ended up covering something irrelevant.
Regards,
Vadim

Vadim,
Report queries and report region use the same generic report layout. However the processing is handled by different engines. The underlying technical problem with your case is that the substitution string #TEXT_ALIGN# is not substituted in all cases for report queries. This usually does not cause any problems, but appears not to work when using Cocoon.
I'll see that we can this resolved with the next version of APEX, however when working with report layouts, you would typically use your own RTF or XSL-FO stylesheets, where this problem would not occur. The option to use the generic report layout is only included so the data can be tested independently from the layout and is not really intended to be used as the actual layout at runtime.
The generic report layout function is mainly designed to be used for report regions.
Regards,
Marc

Can Apex be a "reporting tool"?

I use it and think. But there is a discussion, Formatting Printable reports with Apex (pdf, xls,...)
Please put in your input.
Thanks

Yes, Apex can you used for reporting. If you have large volumes of data to query and response time is important, you'll want to manually create your reports to ensure the queries are efficient. Ideally you'll install Apex in the same database, but you can install it in a separate DB and point to your 9i data source via DB links. DB links don't support some datatypes (LOBs etc) so be sure to understand what data you are going to want to query first. Using DB links can only slow your response time - but be sure to measure it before just eliminating them. I mostly use 1 Apex installation and connect to remote DB's over DB links. Apex likes to have table/view definitions locally when you're developing, so you either create locat tables and then replace with DB links once it's working - or create local views with embedded DB links. It's no majic black box - standard Oracle coding considerations apply.

Oc4j (oc4j_extended_101340.zip) - Log

hi,
I have installed oc4j (oc4j_extended_101340.zip) and i have installed FOP for apex pdf printing in that.
Now i want to enable Log for that and also i want the exact Location where the log will get generated it it is enabled by default.
Regds
Murali

For internal questions please use the internal mailing lists...
--olaf

SQL query in some item.

I have a string item with this example value:
"SELECT 1 FROM dual"
Yes, this is SQL query.
Now I want to create PDF Report (Shared Components > Report Queries...) based on this SQL. I want to use this item (exactly, value from this item).
How can I do it? Is this possible?
regards,
Jarek

Hello,
You can’t use “dynamic” SQL query within the Report Queries technique.
You can use, as Luis suggested, a report region based on function returning query, in order to construct your SQL query. You can read some more details in the following:
Re: ApEx PDF printing with Advanced support.
Re: Dynamic Column in SQL-Statement
Hope this helps,
Arie.

APEX PDF

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