Special characters in CLOB are making report fail

Question

Hi-
I am working on a report which is refering CLOB column from database. If the CLOB had special characters like & or <, the report is returning error 'Expected name instead of .' I created a view and stored CLOB as varchar2 and refered the view in query and the report works fine, but the drawback of this is varchar2 max limit is 4000 chars and the text i intend to show is more than 4000 chars.
Can someone share any ideas on how to get around this error?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hmm, thought I'd dig a little to see what you guys mean. Indeed XML Publisher Data Template doesn't translate CLOB special characters and so BIP chokes!
My advice - log a bug and write XML output in PL/SQL.
Here's my working for reference (note spaces added after & to preserve special chars!):
CREATE TABLE test_clob (
id            NUMBER(15)
, file_name     VARCHAR2(1000)
, file_contents CLOB
, timestamp     DATE
insert into test_clob
(id,file_name, file_contents)
values
(3,'Greeting = <Hello, world>','Greeting = <Hello, my funky file contents>');
ed gg.sql
select '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>'
from dual;
select xmlelement("row",
                  xmlelement("file_name", file_name),
                  xmlelement("file_contents", file_contents))
from   test_clob
where  id = 3;
:q
set serverout off termout off echo off verify off head off trimspool on
set lines 300 pages 0 long 20000
spool gg.xml
@gg
spool off
exit
cat gg.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<row><file_name>Greeting = & lt;Hello, world& gt;</file_name><file_contents>Greeting = & lt;Hello, my funky file contents& gt;</file_contents></row>
OKAY: both fields translated! Let's try using dataTemplate
<?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'utf-8'?>
<dataTemplate name="XXV8_CLOB" description="$Header$" defaultPackage="" Version="1.0">
<parameters>
</parameters>
<properties>
<property name="include_parameters" value="true" />
<property name="include_null_Element" value="true" />
<property name="include_rowsettag" value="false" />
<property name="scalable_mode" value="on" />
<property name="debug_mode" value="off" />
</properties>
<dataQuery>
<sqlStatement name="Q_LOBS">
<![CDATA[
select file_name, file_contents
from   test_clob
where  id = 3
]]>
</sqlStatement>
</dataQuery>
</dataTemplate>
OUTPUT:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<XXV8_CLOB>
<LIST_Q_LOBS>
<Q_LOBS>
<FILE_NAME>Greeting = & lt;Hello, world& gt;</FILE_NAME>
<FILE_CONTENTS>
Greeting = <Hello, my funky file contents></FILE_CONTENTS>
</Q_LOBS>
</LIST_Q_LOBS>
</XXV8_CLOB>
CHOKE:
Post-processing of request 2805016 failed at 18-MAR-2008 22:59:19 with the error message:
One or more post-processing actions failed. Consult the OPP service log for details.
Error message in OPP output processor:
Template code: XXV8_CLOB
Template app:  XXV8
Language:      en
Territory:     US
Output type:   PDF
[3/18/08 10:59:18 PM] [UNEXPECTED] [752315:RT2805016] java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
     at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.invokeParse(XSLT10gR1.java:517)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.transform(XSLT10gR1.java:224)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLTWrapper.transform(XSLTWrapper.java:177)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:1044)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:997)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:212)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.createFO(FOProcessor.java:1657)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.generate(FOProcessor.java:967)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.runProcessTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:5888)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3438)
     at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3527)
     at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.XMLPublisherProcessor.process(XMLPublisherProcessor.java:247)
     at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.OPPRequestThread.run(OPPRequestThread.java:157)
Caused by: oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLParseException: Expected name instead of ,.
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLError.flushErrors1(XMLError.java:324)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLReader.scanNameChars(XMLReader.java:1056)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLReader.scanQName(XMLReader.java:1768)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseAttr(NonValidatingParser.java:1444)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseAttributes(NonValidatingParser.java:1394)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseElement(NonValidatingParser.java:1225)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseRootElement(NonValidatingParser.java:314)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseDocument(NonValidatingParser.java:281)
     at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:266)
     ... 17 moreAs you can see the varchar special characters are "escaped" or translated or whatever you want, but not the CLOB!
Regards,
Gareth
Blog: http://garethroberts.blogspot.com/