10 1 2 new features - oraclenew features (cont’d) enhanced formatting: graph new features...

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Oracle Reports10g Release 2 (10.1.2)New Features

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New Features Overview

New Output FormatEnhanced FormattingStandards ComplianceManaging and Monitoring EnhancementsReliabilityPerformance

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) introduces the following new features:•New output format: A new output format SPREADSHEET is now available to send Oracle Reports’ output to Microsoft Excel.•New formatting: This release greatly enhances the formatting capabilities, for example, the capability to use inline HTML tags, user-defined style sheets, and so on.•Standards compliance: Oracle Reports output is now compliant to HTML 4.01 and XML 1.1 standards.•Managing and Monitoring enhancements: These enhancements allow more detailed configuration of Oracle Reports parameters, and also provide several new performance metrics.•Reliability: Both the development and deployment environments have been strengthened for the ever-increasing demands of enterprise-grade reliability.•Performance: Oracle Reports has improved the performance in HTMLCSS output format, and in graph output.

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New Output Format: SPREADSHEET

Feature– New output format: SPREADSHEET

Benefits– Send existing paper reports’ output to MS Excel– Preserve rich layout formatting– No need for JSP coding / JSP deployment overhead

New Output Format: SPREADSHEET

There has always been a demand for generating output to spreadsheet-compatible applications like Microsoft Excel, so that the output data can be further sliced, dissected, and analyzed. In the past, several approaches had been used to generate such output, for example, getting the output in delimited text format (CSV file) and opening it in Microsoft Excel, or using the JSP technology to render the Web page in Microsoft Excel by changing the page contentType. However, there was no easy way for users to get the output of paper reports in Microsoft Excel and preserve the rich layout formatting at the same time.

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) introduces a new output format (DESFORMAT=SPREADSHEET), which allows you to generate output from paper layout reports directly to files that can be opened in Microsoft Excel. This new output format preserves the rich layout formatting such as colors, fonts, conditional formatting, graphs, and images.

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PDF

SPREADSHEET

New Output Format: SPREADSHEET (cont’d)

New Output Format: SPREADSHEET (cont’d)

Sample report output in PDF, and in Microsoft Excel. Rich formatting is preserved in Microsoft Excel, and the graph image is also seen in the output.

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Enhanced Formatting: Inline HTML

Feature– Honor HTML formatting tags in text

Boilerplate text, database field or link to file– All bitmap output formats, like PDF and RTF

Benefits– In a single text object, achieve

Different color Any Data . Any Format . Any where

Different font style The reporting solution of choice

Different font size OracleAS 10g Reports Services

Enhanced Formatting: Inline HTML

Oracle Reports allows a variety of fonts, styles, and colors for text objects in your reports. If you need to apply different formatting to different words within a text field, you can use HTML tags for formatting and set the object's Contains HTML Tags property to Yes. However, until now, such formatting could be seen only in HTML and HTMLCSS output.

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) introduces text formatting enhancements thatallow you to use a defined set of inline HTML formatting tags to format text style (bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough) and text attributes (font name, font color, and font size), and generate formatted text objects in all bitmap output formats (HTML, HTMLCSS, PDF, RTF, and PostScript) and in Reports Builder when the objects' Contains HTML Tags property is set to Yes. This property applies to boilerplate text objects, field objects, and text file link objects.

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Prints <b>100 copies</b> a minutePrinter

Resolution <span style="color:red">2 Mpixels</span>Digital Camera

Product DescriptionProduct Name

Database Table

Report Output

Enhanced Formatting: Inline HTML (cont’d)

Enhanced Formatting: Inline HTML (cont’d)

Report output in PDF format, and the underlying data. The database table contains a couple of fields with inline HTML tags, which get interpreted and the text gets formatted appropriately in the PDF output.

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Enhanced Formatting: User-defined Style Sheets

Feature– Specify your custom style sheet in report– HTMLCSS output uses style information

Benefits– Consistent look-and-feel across reports– Use corporate style sheet: inherit the corporate

look-and-feel– Personalize a report using different style sheets

Enhanced Formatting: User-defined Style Sheets

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) provides the capability to apply external style sheets and user-defined styles to your report or report objects when you generate HTMLCSS output. Now you can use your corporate style sheet in the HTMLCSS output to inherit the exact look-and-feel of your corporate Web site.

You can specify external style sheets and styles using the following new properties:•Style Sheets property: specifies the list of external style sheet(s) to be applied to your report. •CSS Class Name property: specifies the user-defined style to be applied to an object (report, frame, repeating frame, text boilerplate, or field).•CSS ID property: specifies the user-defined style to be applied to a text object inside your report.

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CSS 2

CSS 1

ReportDefinition

Enhanced Formatting: User-defined Style Sheets (cont’d)

Enhanced Formatting: User-defined Style Sheets (cont’d)

Report definition file and HTMLCSS output. Single report definition produces different look-and-feel in the output, depending on the style sheet chosen.

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Enhanced Formatting: HTML Output

Feature– New table attributes supported in HTML output

Width

CellspacingCellpaddingBorder

Benefits– More control over HTML output– Better results when printing HTML output

Enhanced Formatting: HTML Output

When the HTML output is generated, frames and repeating frames are converted to HTML tables. Oracle Reports 10g (10.1.2) introduces an enhancement that allows you to configure the width of these tables in the Property Inspector for the report. The value you specify is applied to the table width tag while generating the HTML output. Similarly, you can control the border, cellspacing, and cellpadding table attributes.

By using these table attributes, you can precisely control the HTML output. For example, if the HTML output, when printed, does not print the entire width of the table, you can decrease the table width to get proper printed output.

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Enhanced Formatting: PDF Output

Features– Direct TTF (True Type Font) subsetting– Improved TTC (True Type Collection) Font support

Benefits– With PDF subsetting, output is:

SearchableAccessible: can be read by a screen reader

– Font collections can be used more effectively

Enhanced Formatting: PDF Output

With font subsetting, the PDF file includes the font information needed to render the PDF, regardless of the availability of that font on the machine used to view the report. PDF font subsetting works for single byte, multibyte, and Unicode fonts, and is the preferred method of creating multibyte reports.

With this release, Oracle Reports directly subsets the TTF (True Type Font) as a Type0 font, and no longer converts it into Type3 font. As a result, when PDF subsettingfeature is used, the output is:

•Searchable: you can search the contents•Accessible: contents can be read by a screen reader

True Type Collection (TTC) fonts, as the name suggests, are a collection of multiple fonts. Oracle9i Reports and Oracle Reports 10g (9.0.4) support TTC files. However, Oracle Reports always picked up the first font file in the TTC collection. With Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2), you can use the zero-based index to indicate which specific font should be picked up from the TTC collection.

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PDF Output: Searchable

Enhanced Formatting: PDF Output (cont’d)

Enhanced Formatting: PDF Output (cont’d)

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) PDF output is searchable.

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Enhanced Formatting: Graph New Features

Feature– Specify Date sorting order in graph

Benefits– No dependence on data model to get sorted dates– Can specify different sorting order per graph– Allows time-data to be plotted on X-axis

Use ascending order

Enhanced Formatting: Graph New Features

Date Sorting Order

For dates to be recognized as valid time axis data, Oracle Reports graphs need the dates to be presented in ascending order. However, if the dates are not sorted in the report’s data model, there was no way in Oracle Reports 10g (9.0.4) to sort the dates while presenting them to Reports graphs.

This enhancement allows you to specify the sorting order of dates in the graphs independent of the sorting order in the report. As a result, even if the dates are not sorted in the report’s data model, you can specify the sorting order in the graphs as“ascending”, so that the dates are automatically recognized as valid time axis data. In other words, the dates can be sorted in graphs without explicitly using an ORDER BY clause in the SQL query. This enhancement applies to the DATE data type on the graph X-axis. You are free to specify a different sorting order in each graph.

To use this enhancement, you must specify the attribute dateSortOrder in the <rw:graph...> tag. This tag is found in either:•The graph object’s Property Inspector via the Graph Settings property (for paper layout reports).•The JSP source code in the Web Source view (for Web layout reports).

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Feature– Support for dashed and dotted lines

Benefits– Especially useful for black-and-white printing– Distinguish the lines easily

Feature– Specify time format, e.g., 6:00 pm or 18:00 hrs, Jan

or January, 2005 or ’05

Enhanced Formatting: Graph New Features (cont’d)


Dashed and Dotted Lines

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) supports dashed and dotted lines in graphs. This is especially useful if you want black-and-white printed output – you can easily distinguish between two or more lines by using different styles.

Time Format

This release allows you to specify the time format to be shown on the X-axis. You could choose, for example:•Year format

•4-digit, 2-digit, or 2-digit with an apostrophe•Month Format

•Full month name, 3-letter abbreviation, Single-letter abbreviation, or Month Number

•Day Format•Day of week, Day of month, Abbreviated day of week, and so on

•Time Format •24-hour, 24-hour with minute, and so on

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Ascending date sort, dotted line, time format



This example shows the following enhancements:•Dates are sorted in this graph, and are automatically recognized by the graph as time axis. As a result, the month and year names are separated from the dates. Since the data is for the same year (2005), the year is not repeated with every month.•Dotted line•Closely controlled time format:

•4-digit year•Long month names•2-digit dates

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Standards Compliance: HTML and XML

HTML and HTMLCSS output– Both pass HTML 4.01 syntax checkers

XML output– Encoding as per XML 1.1 specifications

Encoding must be specifiedDefault Encoding = UTF-8

Standards Compliance: HTML and XML

HTML and HTMLCSS Output

With Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) both HTML and HTMLCSS output pass HTML 4.01 syntax checkers.

XML Output

XML 1.1 specifications state that it is necessary to specify encoding in XML documents, and that the default XML encoding should be UTF-8. For example, in the XML output of your report, encoding should be specified as:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) enforces these specifications in its XML output, as compared to earlier releases where the encoding corresponding to the NLS_LANG setting of the Reports Server machine was inherited.

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Managing and Monitoring Enhancements

Feature– New All Metrics page on

Enterprise Manager to monitor real-time data

Scheduled, current, past jobsServer and engine informationPerformance data

Managing and Monitoring Enhancements

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) has an improved integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) exposes a new All Metrics page on Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control. Using this page, you can•View the scheduled, current, and past jobs.•View the server and engine information.•Monitor fine-grained performance data.

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Feature– New Reports Engine page

Benefits– Monitor

Engine metrics and Engine trace

– Manage:Kill a running / hung / idle engine

– Configure:Configure engine parameters

Managing and Monitoring Enhancements (cont’d)


The new Reports Engine page on tha Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control shows:•Engine Name, the corresponding Process ID, and the current status•Which Job ID is being run, and how long has the job been running – if you think the job has been running too long, and might have caused a hang, you can kill that engine•If the engine is idle, how long has it been idle•How many jobs have been run on this engine, and how many more jobs will be run before this engine is shut down•The NLS_LANG setting for this engine – this may be different for each engine due to the Dynamic Environment Switching Feature•Total time the engine has been up, and for how much time has it been idle

Based on these engine metrics, you can choose to view the engine trace, kill the engine if needed, and perform the required configuration of engine parameters.

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New Reports Engine page



Sample Reports Engine Page. Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) exposes an improved Reports Engine page on Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control.

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Reliability

Reports Server and Engine– Improved enterprise-grade reliability– Strengthened for today’s increasingly demanding

deployment scenariosReports Builder

– Beta version of “Auto-save” feature

Reliability

Reports Server and Engine

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) continues the earlier releases’ focus on reliability by continually making the test conditions more demanding and more realistic. This makes Oracle Reports Services capable of handling increasing expectations of today’s deployment environments.

Reports Builder

Oracle Reports extends the concept of reliability to the development environment (Reports Builder) by introducing a feature called “Auto-save” (beta version). When this feature is turned on, the Reports Builder, like any other modern-day development environment, saves each modification made to the report into a recovery file. This serves as a guarantee against unexpected risky events such as a machine failure.

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Performance

HTMLCSS– Time taken to load HTMLCSS output in browser

17 sec20 sec4 sec380 sec2,000

AfterBeforeAfterBeforeNN 7.1IE 6.0No of

records

Graphs– Improved performance: 15-20%

Performance

Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) gives special emphasis to improving performance.

HTMLCSS

For HTMLCSS output, the following enhancement has been introduced:An absolute positioning style is defined globally at the beginning of the HTML file, and this information is not repeated for every line of the output. This has resulted in huge performance improvement in the time taken to load HTMLCSS output in the browser.

Graphs

Performance of graph-rich reports was the special focus of attention in Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2), because these reports obvisouly take more time to execute compared to text-only reports. Several enhancements in the area of graph rendering have led to about 15-20% improvement in time taken to execute reports containing graphs.

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Other Enhancements

New JDK-based communication mechanismClone and re-create OracleAS instanceAssociate FR Services with InfrastructureSupport for new destinations from FormsImproved support for Right-to-Left languagesSupport for new data types in REF CURSORsEnhanced documentation

Other EnhancementsNew JDK-based communication mechanism: Borland’s Visibroker has been replaced with the JDK-based Java 2 ORB (Object Request Broker) in Oracle Reports’ communication architecture, which overcomes Visibroker’s unavailability on HP Tru-64 platform.Clone and re-create OracleAS instance: Using the new OracleAS feature called cloning, you can create an exact copy of your already configured OracleAS instance. With this enhancement you can re-create your Oracle Reports environment as part of Oracle Application Server.Associate FR Services with Infrastructure: By associating your Forms and Reports (FR) Services installation with Oracle Infastructure, you can now use Oracle’s built-in security mechanism (Single Sign-On and Identity Management) with FR Services install.Support for new destinations from Forms: Oracle Forms Runtime now supports the following new destinations in the RUN_REPORT_OBJECT() built-in function: FTP, WEBDAV, and ORACLEPORTAL.New data type support in REF CURSORs: In Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2), the following new data types are supported in REF CURSORs: Long, Raw, Long Raw, BLOB, CLOB, and BFILE.Improved Support for Right-to-Left Languages: Oracle Reports 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) has improved the algorithm that it uses to calculate the display width of the text for Right-to-Left languages (such as Hebrew and Arabic), resulting in pixel-perfect placement.Enhanced Documentation: Oracle Reports documentation has been enhanced to include a new chapter on how to avoid cross-platform issues, a new appendix to give you consolidated information on troubleshooting all Oracle Reports issues, revised content with detailed tips on tuning Oracle Reports, and new samples for building high quality reports.

10 1 2 new features - oraclenew features (cont’d) enhanced formatting: graph new features...

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