Can Discoverer have link to display documents stored outside the database?

Question

I posted a message some time ago called "Possible for Discoverer to display BLOB type documents stored in database?" and got great answer.
Now our customers are asking if it is possible, from Discoverer, to link somehow to a file stored outside the database on the Unix file system and get their computer to display it? Can anyone tell me if this is possible please?
The only thing I've seen in the documentation that may be related is in Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Configuration Guide, section 10.6 List of Discoverer user preferences. It says there that Discoverer preference ProtocolList can be set so that Discoverer hyperlinks can be set to use protocols such as telnet, but the default is HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP.
THank you in advance if you can help.
Regards,
Julie.

Answer 1

Hi Rod,
I have tried the second method: "create a Oracle directory pointing to the Unix directory containing the files". I have had success with it, but I'd be grateful if you could advise me if you would have done this the same way as described below:
I put two Word docs and two text docs called clob_test1.txt, clob_test2.txt, blob_test1.doc, blob_test2 in the Unix directory corresponding to an Oracle directory called 'EIF'. I thought an extrenal table was needed so that Discoverer would have an object to write a queruy against. So I created a file called lob_test_data.txt with the following contents:
1,01-JAN-2006,text/plain,clob_test1.txt
2,02-JAN-2006,text/plain,clob_test2.txt
3,01-JAN-2006,application/msword,blob_test1.doc
4,02-JAN-2006,application/msword,blob_test2.
THen I created an external table using the following DDL:
CREATE TABLE jum_temp_lob_tab (
file_id NUMBER(10),
date_content DATE,
mime_type VARCHAR2(100),
blob_content BLOB
ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
DEFAULT DIRECTORY EIF
ACCESS PARAMETERS
RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE
BADFILE EIF:'lob_tab_%a_%p.bad'
LOGFILE EIF:'lob_tab_%a_%p.log'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
MISSING FIELD VALUES ARE NULL
file_id CHAR(10),
date_content CHAR(11) DATE_FORMAT DATE MASK "DD-MON-YYYY",
mime_type CHAR(100),
blob_filename CHAR(100)
COLUMN TRANSFORMS (blob_content FROM LOBFILE (blob_filename) FROM (EIF) BLOB)
LOCATION ('lob_test_data.txt')
PARALLEL 2
REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED
then created a Discoverer End User Layer folder against this external table, and used exactly the same technique as we did for downloading the BLOB from the database table (creating a new folder item containing a URL calling a database procedure which calls the Oracle code to download the doc). THis worked, but sometimes my PC didn't seem to know that the Word docs were Word docs and it needed to launch Word. Other times it did manage to do this OK. It always displayed the two .txt files as HTML docs.
Just wondered if you'd be good enough to critique this approach.
THank you, Julie.