Portal Problem: Workaround for NOT alphabetizing paramters in portal form?

Question

Hello all,
In Portal, I am defining 6i reports. Portal has forms that pass these parameters to 6i reports but they keep showing up in alphabetical order. So, the rep_end_date is appearing before the rep_start_date.
These are the steps:
1. Go to Navigator
2. Click on Administer
3. Click on Display Portlet Repository
4. Under Seeded Providers, Click Oracle Reports Security
5. Click on Reports Definition File Access
6. Click Create Reports Definition File Access
7. Go through the steps until you get to OPTIONAL PARAMETERS
Enter REP_START_DATE
Enter REP_END_DATE
8. When you are finished select done
9. Click on Customize
10. In the form you will see that the REP_END_DATE appears before the
REP_START_DATE
It is not logical for the users to enter the end date parameter first and then the start date second.
I tried to work around it by changing rep_start_date to arep_start_date. This
fixes the appearance on the form. Unfortunately this change causes the report
not to work. The parameters used in the report 6i must match the parameters in
portal exactly.
I have been in contact with ORACLE with a TAR. They replied that I should ask you for any code that you might have or ideas.
I have been brainstorming some ideas:
1. Going into the report and renaming rep_start_date to something like
raep_start_date. The advantage would be that it would fix the problem. The
disadvantage is that we would have to go into every report and check for
wherever that bind variable is named and change it. It would be tedious.
2. Another option would be to create a form using form builder for each
report. This also would be tedious and would require the forms server to be
configured. We aren't sure whether a report being called from a form would
process faster than just a report being called from portal or not. We are not
as experienced in using form builder, however we have successfully created one.
The advantage would be that it would solve the problem. The disadvantages is
that it might be more time consuming.
3. I suppose yet another option would be to create a html page as a portlet
and then pass the parameters to the report that way. This would be where
coding would come into play. I have been researching this option but I think
that we would have to hard code the specific paramters used for each of the
100s of reports. There might be a LOV issue with this one.
4. Final option is to hope that one of the portal developers would have code
that would easily fix this problem on OTN.
I look forward to any information that you could provide.
Thanks and best regards,
Lindsay

Answer 1

An alternative, maybe simpler, is to join together the exported segments using Quicktime Player.  Importing into iMovie again might result in degradation of video quality.
Geoff.