Generating an excel sheet from an oracle table

Question

Hi,
What is the easiest way to generate an .xls report from oracle i.e. when the user for example views some records in an oracle table using SQL_FORMS I want to then give them a button where they get a simple .xls report of the records in the table.
I have heard 'ole' method is one way, is that the best method and how is it done exactly...?
Thanks

Answer 1

Have you tried this?
CREATE OR REPLACE procedure print_reports is
cursor c_mgr is
select
t1.ename,
t1.empno
from
emp t1
where exists
(select
'x'
from
emp t2
where
t1.empno=t2.mgr);
cursor c_direct_reports (cv_mgr number) is
select
empno,
ename,
job,
hiredate,
sal
from
emp
where
mgr=cv_mgr;
wfile_handle utl_file.file_type;
v_wstring varchar2 (100);
v_header varchar2(100);
v_file varchar2(100);
v_date varchar2(20);
begin
select
to_char(sysdate,'dd_mon_yyyy')
into
v_date
from
dual;
v_header :='empno'||chr(9)||'ename'||chr(9)||'job'||chr(9)||'hiredate'||chr(9)||'sal';
for r_mgr in c_mgr loop
v_file := r_mgr.ename||'_direct_reports_'||v_date||'.xls';
wfile_handle := utl_file.fopen ('REPORTS',v_file, 'W');
utl_file.put_line(wfile_handle,v_header);
for r in c_direct_reports(r_mgr.empno) loop
v_wstring := r.empno||chr(9)||r.ename||chr(9)||r.job||chr(9)||to_char(r.hiredate,'dd/mm/yyyy')
||chr(9)||r.sal;
utl_file.put_line(wfile_handle,v_wstring);
end loop;
utl_file.fclose (wfile_handle);
end loop;
end print_reports;
Reference:
http://www.orafusion.com/art_excel.htm