Regardless of whether BI Publisher is running on Linux, Unix, or Windows, the printer destination can be any IPP server.
The IPP server can be the printer itself, which is the easiest option, but if the printer does not natively support IPP, you can set up a print server that does support IPP (such as CUPS) and connect BI Publisher to the print server and then the print server to the printer. In this print server scenario, the print server can run on any operating system.
To send fax from BI Publisher, you must set up Common Unix Printing Service (CUPS) and the fax4CUPS extension, to enable connection to your fax server from BI Publisher. The fax set up requires this plugin to the CUPS server on the operating system. Note that the Administration page makes the distinction between a fax and a printer server in the UI, so that users can pick one or the other or both at runtime. Even though the fax and printer server that the users see can both use a single CUPS server.
For information on setting up CUPS or Windows IPP print servers and how to connect network printers to them, refer to the CUPS or Windows IPP software vendor documentation.
Two types of security are supported: Basic and Digest.
About Printing PDF
PDF is a popular output format for business reports and is printable from viewer software such as Adobe Reader. However, some reports require printing directly from the report server. For example, paychecks and invoices are usually printed as scheduled batch jobs. Some newer printers with PostScript Level 3 compliant Raster Image Processing can natively support PDF documents, but there are still many printers in business use that only support PostScript Level 2 that cannot print PDF documents directly.
To print PDF documents directly from the BI Publisher server if your printer or print server does not support printing PDF, you have the following options:
Select one of BI Publisher's filters: PDF to PostScript or PDF to PCL.
Configure a custom, or third-party filter.
After completing all other required fields for the print server, you can schedule reports to print directly from the BI Publisher server to any printer in your system that supports PostScript Level 2.
You set up printers from the Administration page.
To set up a printer:
From the Admin page select Printer. Select Add Server.
Enter the following required fields:
Server Name — Enter a unique name. Example: Localprinter
URI — Enter the Uniform Resource Identifier for the printer.
Example: ipp://myhost:631/printers/myprinter
Example URI syntax for Windows IPP server: http://ip-address/printers/name-printer/.printer
Enter a Filter (optional).
A filter enables you to call a conversion utility to convert the PDF generated by BI Publisher to a file format supported by your specific printer type. BI Publisher provides the following filters:
PDF to PostScript
BI Publisher includes a PDF to PostScript filter. This filter converts PDF to PostScript Level 2. Select PDF to PostScript from the list to use BI Publisher's predefined filter.
PDF to PCL
To convert PDF to PCL, select PDF to PCL. This automatically populates the Filter Command field.
BI Publisher supports the PDF to PCL conversion only for font selection requirements for check printing. For generic printing requirements, use the PDF to PostScript filter.
You can embed PCL commands into RTF templates to invoke the PCL commands at a specific position on the PCL page; for example, to use a font installed on the printer for routing and account numbers on a check. For more information, see Embedding PCL Commands for Check Printing in Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.
You can also call a custom filter using operating system commands.
About Custom Filters
To specify a custom filter, pass the native OS command string with the two placeholders for the input and output filename, {infile} and {outfile}.
This is useful especially if you are trying to call IPP printers directly or IPP printers on Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS). Unlike CUPS, those print servers do not translate the print file to a format the printer can understand, therefore only limited document formats are supported. With the filter functionality, you can call any of the native OS commands to transform the document to the format that the target printer can understand.
For example, to transform a PDF document to a PostScript format, enter the following PDF to PS command in the Filter field:
pdftops {infile} {outfile}
To call an HP LaserJet printer setup on a Microsoft IIS from Linux, you can set Ghostscript as a filter to transform the PDF document into the format that the HP LaserJet can understand. To do this, enter the following Ghostscript command in the Filter field:
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=laserjet -sOutputFile={outfile} {infile}
For fax servers, you can use the filter to transform the file to Tag Image File Format (TIFF).
Optionally enter the following fields if appropriate:
Security fields — Username and Password, Authentication Type (None, Basic, Digest) and Encryption Type (None, SSL).
Proxy Server fields — Host, Port, User Name, Password, Authentication Type (None, Basic, Digest)