Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Printing architecture
PDF printing in Oracle Application Express requires an externally deined print or
report server. An external report server can be the Apache FOP reports server from
Apache, the reports server from Business Intelligence Publisher, or server from a
third-party such as Jasper reports. Different lavors of an external report server are
possible. When the user clicks on a print link in Application Express, the Application
Express engine generates the corresponding report data in XML format and a report
template in XSL-FO or RTF format.
All of this architectural complexity is transparent to the end users and developers.
Here, transparent means that the end user only sees the print link and the end
result, and not the architecture behind. So end users just click on the print links,
and developers just declaratively set regions to support PDF printing.
Your report server can be Oracle BI Publisher, Oracle Application Server Containers
for J2EE (OC4J) with Apache FOP, or another processing engine.
If you choose BI Publisher as your report server, you will enjoy a higher
level of functionality. Oracle Application Express provides two levels of
functionality—External (Apache FOP) and BI Publisher (Advanced). With
Apache FOP, you are limited to XSL-FO report templates only.
What is planned for the future version of
APEX Listener?
The idea is that instead of having to conigure a separate print rendering engine, this
engine would be enabled automatically when using the APEX Listener. And rather
than sending XML and XSL out from the database and retrieving the PDF back into
the database, we would just send the XML and XSL to the APEX Listener, which
would process the PDF and send that straightaway to the client.
Of course, this might be considered forward looking and there is a need to point here
as well to the Safe Harbor Statement of Oracle Corporation. Hopefully this feature
will make it, but who knows.
