PDFs using BI publisher and special characters - pound sterling

Question

I have a table with character strings which include the £ pound sterling sign.
If I create an xml file from the table using the escape sequence for the pound sign & # 163; and load it into BI publisher, the pdf renders correctly using an rtf template.
If I include the pound sign in the rtf template itself the pdf renders correctly and if I use a report query in Apex based on the table, and an rtf template then the pdf renders correctly.
However there is a limit to the number of columns that can be sent to BI via the report query - we have found this to be 119 columns. For more than this we have been using a stored function to return xml data as a clob and use the clob to generate the pdf with the rtf report layout (using get_print_document). This method works fine but the pound sign is not rendered correctly (appears as "?").
The NLS_LANG is set to english_united kingdom in the database and in BI publisher. The locale in bi publisher is en_GB. BI will create the pdf correctly with the pound sign if using a standard xml file (with escape seq for pound) so I am sure it is not a language issue in BI/Apex.
Any ampersands in the xml cause the pdf to fail completely and we cannot represent special characters with a sequence containing the ampersand for this reason. I have tried "& # 163;" and "& amp;#163;" and variations and have also tried using CDATA, none of which gives the correct pdf output. I have also tried to switch the encoding to Windows-1252 or ISO-8859-1 in the header of the xml (xml generated by stored procedure so can control this), but this gives incorrect results too.
We also need to send other special characters to BI via get_print_document and apex (bullet points, ampersands, dashes ) but cannot use the escape sequences because of the ampersand problem.
Has anyone had any success with this?
Is there any plan ( for a future version of Apex) to increase the number of columns that can be used in report query using Apex/BI publisher?
Thanks
Kathryn

Answer 1

Hi Kathryn
I've had exactly the same problem as you've mentioned.
Firstly, I've also found that I cannot select more than 119 columns from a view using a report query and have opted to the use the stored function to return the xml (same as you).
After conducting a lot of searching and experimenting i've found that you can use the following escape characters in REPLACE in your stored function:-
'£' can be replaced with CHR(194)||CHR(163)
'%' can be replaced with '%25'
'&' can be replaced with '%26amp;'
I found the above escape characters from the xml file or by opening the xml file in Wordpad. Therefore I'm sure you'll be able to find the escape characters for the other symbols that you mentioned i.e. bullet points, dashes etc.
I hope this has helped. Good luck and let me know if you get any developments with the limitation on the number of columns that can be selected from a report query as this would save a lot of trouble (as I'm sure you're aware).
Thanks
Natalie