Do you think I am wasting my time?

Question

I just wanted to ask this question because I'm starting to think
Oracle Reports
is good only if you want to develop some report based on what
developers had in
mind about a set of "static" templates to build a report... :)
I am working in the development of some reports and currently
I'm reading about
Oracle Reports to test and decide if it is worth the time I'm
spending
learning the product to finish my job. I'm developing an
intranet site using
Oracle 8.1.6 and tomcat as a jsp server.
I spend a whole day installing Oracle Reports and making it work
with tomcat,
just to discover that the report generated on web was different
from the Report
Builder Editor, it displays always the background color to
white. Because I
didn't found a solution I decided to leave that little problem
and get back
later, then I started to work on the simplest of the reports I
need to do,
what I want to do is something like this:
<p>
<code>
<table border="1">
<tr><td>Jan</td><td>Feb</td><td>Mar</td><td>...</td><td>Dec</td><
td>Total</td></tr>
<tr><td>Item1</td><td>
1</td><td>4</td><td>80</td><td>3</td><td>88</td><td></tr>
<tr><td>Item2</td><td>20</td><td>0</td><td>10</td><td>6</td><td>3
6</td><td></tr>
<tr><td>Item3</td><td> 3</td><td>1</td><td>
4</td><td>70</td><td>78</td><td></tr>
<tr><td> .</td></tr>
<tr><td> .</td></tr>
<tr><td> .</td></tr>
<tr><td>Total</td><td>24</td><td>5</td><td>94</td><td>79</td><td>
202</td><td></tr>
</table>
</code>
<p>
I started making a matrix report with Item as the row, month as
the column
and count(*) as the cell, but the result was:
<p>
<code>
<table border="1">
<tr><td>
1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>...</td><td>12</td><td>Total</td></
tr>
<tr><td>Item1</td><td>xx</td><td>xx</td><td>xx</td><td>xx</td><td
xxx</td></tr><tr><td>Item2</td><td>xx</td><td>xx</td><td>xx</td><td>xx</td><td
xx</td></tr><tr><td> .</td></tr>
<tr><td> .</td></tr>
<tr><td> .</td></tr>
</table>
</code>
<p>
Because I wanted to display the month name changed my query to
return this
value and the result was:
<table border="1">
<tr><td>Apr</td><td>Aug</td><td>Dec</td><td>Feb</td><td>Jan</td><
td>...</td></tr>
<tr><td>Item1</td><td>x</td><td>x</td><td>x</td><td>x</td><td>x</
td></tr>
<tr><td>Item2</td><td>x</td><td>x</td><td>x</td><td>x</td><td>x</
td></tr>
</table>
<p>
The name of the month sorted??. I changed the "order by" clause
in my query and
the result was the same, tried to change some sort property but
didn't found
anything.
I was looking something, maybe a formula to change the number of
the month to
its value with no success, when I created the formula it showed
that the return
value had to be a number because the month column is a number. I
tried inserting a formula in the
layout report but it displayed an error I don't remeber exactly
but it was a
"cross reference ..."-something, maybe because the
original "month" group was
changed to a "month + formula" group, I dragged the month out of
the layout
but it displayed other "cross reference" like error. Could
anyone give me some
tip, idea or point me to the right direction maybe in some page
on the web?
Next I tried to use a stand color as the color on the header
(the month labels)
just to discover that I had a fixed color palette, of course the
color I need
is not there, I found in the manuals that it is possible to
import and export
palettes but I didn't found how can I create a new palette, I
just need to have
the #cedfd6 color in my table.
Any tip, wep page address or idea will be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

hello,
here are some answers to your questions :
1) i would use desformat HTMLCSS, which will create an exact representation of your report. the desformat HTML is constraint by HTML-restrictions and therefore the output might not look like you would expect it.
2) color-palette : you have to set the color-palette to editable (tools->preferences). then you can modify the palette.
regards,
the oracle reports team --pw