Report not generating with blob

Question

SO I was trying to create a report to insert an image. I saw and followed the following resource: http://blogs.oracle.com/xmlpublisher/2006/05/inserting_blobs_into_your_repo.html
In the template builder for MSWord, where I grab the XML data containing the Base64 code for the image, the output is all there. - so yes the actual query grabs the base 64 version of the image, as per http://sergekoganovitsch.wordpress.com/2009/05/02/blob-base64-encoding/
Now the situation is there is a temporary table that stores all the fields, and the image, along with the apex session_id. So the report query looks like this:
SELECT
      p.full_name
    , blob_to_clob_base64(p_photo => p.photo) photo
FROM  profiles_tmp p
WHERE p.session_id = :APP_SESSIONSo.. first to make sure it was all working properly, I created another report query specifying a specific session id in the where clause that I know contains a photo - all works fine. However, when I apply the layout to the query above, and test it - it comes out containing no pages. Even if I test it when going through the application where there would be a valid session id, still no pages.
I have tried changing :APP_SESSION to v('APP_SESSION') and to_number(:APP_SESSION) to no avail.
If i remove the image bit, and just have the field as <?PHOTO?> , it outputs the base64 contents fine - but obviously, I want the actual image in the report, not the base64 code.
IF i open the pdf file in a text editor, I get the following:
%PDF-1.4
1 0 obj
<<
/Type /Catalog
/Pages 3 0 R
>>
endobj
2 0 obj
<<
/Type /Info
/Producer (Oracle BI Publisher 10.1.3.4.1)
>>
endobj
3 0 obj
<<
/Type /Pages
/Kids [
/Count 0
>>
endobj
4 0 obj
<<
/ProcSet [ /PDF /Text ]
>>
endobj
xref
0 5
0000000000 65535 f
0000000010 00000 n
0000000065 00000 n
0000000147 00000 n
0000000208 00000 n
trailer
<<
/Size 5
/Root 1 0 R
/Info 2 0 R
/ID [<e45d94e9f08bf009170c54aabd4c051c><e45d94e9f08bf009170c54aabd4c051c>]
>>
startxref
258
%%EOF
<PRE>Servlet error: An exception occurred. The current application deployment descriptors do not allow for including it in this response. Please consult the application log for details.</PRE></BODY></HTML>The DBA enabled trace and I have that log file.. but don't really know what I am looking for :-/
It doesnt really make much sense to me, since when running it in the application there is a valid session id and it doesnt work. but if i explicitly specify the session id in the report query it does work.
Has anyone experienced said problem or can provide any useful guidance?
Thanks,
Trent

Answer 1

Found out this was a limitation to do with apex <= 3.x .. see http://marcsewtz.blogspot.com/2008/06/one-question-about-pdf-printing-feature.html