How to change currency sign in report

Question

How can I change the currency sign in report like from dollar to pound sign. Any help and advice will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Sherry,
I'm stumbling my way thru the same question. we need to print the currency symbol based on the country defined in the data. here's the not-so-short answer:
we're looking into storing the currency symbol as a unicode value (NVARCHAR2 field) in the database by country and linking it to the data selected in the report. I have a select statement in the report sql that retrieves the correct unicode value per data row. the question then seems to become: do i want to display the field as a number with a format mask, or convert the whole thing to a string/char value?
Keeping everything as a number, in the report format field Format Trigger, i create a mask for each field and call a function to do the following:
v_format := q'{(}' || q'{"}' || p_currency || q'{"}' || v_format || q'{)}';
this gives you a mask with the parenthesis for negative numbers, the currency as literal string, and the v_format (NN,NNN,NNN,NNN,NN0.00) for currency amounts. we vary the # of decimal places and pass that value into the function (just to make things complicated.)
the 'uber complex' version of the function converts the number field to a string/char value. this allows you to change the decimal and separator values for an individual data row. we have not decided to implement this, but it works. you have to enter a 'bogus' character field in the report format and use srw.set_field to change the value at runtime. this keeps the value as a number in the sql for math, but a char to display. complicated. the function does this...
          v_format := '999G999G999G990';
          v_decimalplaces := MOD((p_decimalplaces * 10),10);
          IF v_decimalplaces > 0 THEN
                         v_format := v_format || 'D';
               FOR i in 1..v_decimalplaces LOOP
               v_format := v_format || '9';
               END LOOP;
          END IF;
          CASE WHEN SIGN(p_value) >= 0
               THEN
                    v_format := p_currency || TO_CHAR(p_value, v_format, 'NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS = '',.'' ');
                    ELSE
                    v_format := '(' || p_currency || TO_CHAR(ABS(p_value), v_format, 'NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS = '',.'' ') || ')';
               END CASE;
we would pass the values of NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS to the function.
the last 'hitch' is that not every UNICODE currency symbol displays properly. the euro (hex 20AC) is fine, but the korean won (hex 20A9) is not. the database character set is AL32UTF8, and the sql works fine in sql_developer. however, reports does not reliably display the symbol. i have a TAR into oracle at the moment, hoping for clarification. there seem to be many layers in oracle reports to get this to work (database character set, report server character set, font in developer, font on report server, etc.)
let us know how it goes...an often asked, but rarely answered question (IMO). hopefully this gives you some ideas.
thanks,
john