How to view PDF files strored in a BLOB column

Question

Hi all,
I want to display a PDF file, stored in a BLOB column, in a form or through a JavaBean.
But the problem is more complicated then that. I do not want to retrieve the PDF file in the application server that show it through a browser.
Actually, I do not want users to get the entire file, I just want them to see it or print it.
I want, in fact, to display a "stream" of bytes through Oracle Forms. Not a file.
This one, sounded to be a good solution, but actually not. When the file was too big (multiple pages), the application was blocked until the entire file was loaded. And when you try to print it, it wasn't printed right. The advantage of this solution is that it is open-source so we can add methods to connect to the DB, retrieve the content of the BLOB column and displays it without downloading the file.
Here is a good solution. Really good, files are loaded quickly, the rendering is really good and the file is printed perfectly (as it was printed from Adobe Acrobat). The disadvantage of this solution is that it is not open-source and is really expansive.
As you can see, both solutions uses PJC.
So any help, any idea to solve my problem will be highly appreciated.
Thanks to all of you,
Amine
PS : I am using F&R 11gR2

Answer 1

Not entirely. At least we came to the conclusion it doesn't make (much) sense to block the save option of PDFs if you want to allow printing them
Anyway; there is of course another possibilty: you could always write your own java bean PDF reader; there are plenty of java PDF libraries available:
Open Source PDF Libraries in Java
The easiest way would be to choose one which can open a PDF from a URL and render it; I would retrieve the image via mod_plsql using WPG_DOCLOAD and simply use the PDF library to render the PDF. No tempfiles anyway, and if you don't implement it there is also no save button.
cheers