Creating etext template

Question

Hi,
Good morning.
We are currently planning to use OBI Publisher(10.1.3.4) for out transactional reporting. Since we are new to this tools we request your help on building the below scenario.
We are using oracle db as a datasource and writing SQL for building reports.
We need a text file to be generated as a fixed width data which is required for integerating with a 3 party vendor system. We tried build a rtf template and export on CSV, all looks fine except it has an header and double quotes on the starting and ending point of each record. We were not able to remove these characters on runtime.
We then came to know that etext template can be used but we tried all options from searching the net and could not succeed to build a report.
Our queries are
1. Can we build etext template based on SQLs or it works only XML as an input file.
2. If SQL cannot be used directly for etext is there any workaround for this.
My SQL is as below
select 'I'
||'KFA'
||rpad('ITC',5,' ')
||lpad(nvl(DECODE('KFA',
'KA',
SCLX.SPEC_RENTL_REQ_TXT,
'IA',
SCLX.PREV_MI_NAME,
'JT',
SCLX.PREV_LST_NAME,
'DC',
SCLX.EMGC_EMAIL_ADDR),' '),16,' ')
|| RPAD(nvl(SC.LAST_NAME,' '), 30, ' ')
|| RPAD(' ', 30, ' ')
|| SUBSTR(nvl(SC.FST_NAME,''), 1, 1) || RPAD(' ', 1, ' ')
|| RPAD(nvl(TO_CHAR(SLT.TXN_DT, 'YYYYMMDD'),' '),8,' ')
|| LPAD(TRUNC(SLT.NUM_POINTS), 7, '0')
||lpad(nvl(DECODE('KA',
'KA',
SCLX.SPEC_RENTL_REQ_TXT,
'IA',
SCLX.PREV_MI_NAME,
'JT',
SCLX.PREV_LST_NAME,
'DC',
SCLX.EMGC_EMAIL_ADDR),' '),16,' ')
|| RPAD(' ', 5, ' ')
|| RPAD(SPI.NAME, 5, ' ')
|| RPAD(' ', 2, ' ')
|| RPAD(' ', 5, ' ')
|| RPAD(SLT.TXN_num,10,' ')
|| ' ' OUTPUT
FROM S_LOY_MEMBER SLM,
S_CONTACT SC,
S_CONTACT_LOYX SCLX,
S_LOY_TXN SLT,
S_PROD_INT SPI
WHERE SLM.PR_CON_ID = SC.ROW_ID
AND SC.ROW_ID = SCLX.PAR_ROW_ID
AND SLT.MEMBER_ID = SLM.ROW_ID
AND SLT.PROD_ID = SPI.ROW_ID
AND UPPER(SLT.TYPE_CD) = 'REDEMPTION'
AND UPPER(SLT.STATUS_CD) = 'PROCESSED'
AND upper(SPI.NAME) = 'XXX'
On execution I get the complete output in a single column( named OUTPUT) as my resultset.
Can someone help me to build a etext template on this output. I need one record per line in a text file.
Can someone throw some light on this.....
Thanks in Advance
Thanks & Regards
Ramesh

Answer 1

Our queries are
1. Can we build etext template based on SQLs or it works only XML as an input file.
Data input top any template has to be in XML.
2. If SQL cannot be used directly for etext is there any workaround for this.
No, there is no workaround to build the template.
You need to put this query in BIP and get the xml out from there and build the template and upload the template back.