23 Additional New Features in BI Publisher Release 10.1.3.3

This chapter describes features of BI Publisher that were introduced in Release 10.1.3.3 and that apply to Releases 10.1.3.3 through 10.1.3.4. Information about these features is also provided in the BI Publisher documentation set that has been updated for Release 10.1.3.4. This chapter contains the following sections:

• Section 23.1, "Support for CSV Output"

• Section 23.2, "Report Definition Features"

• Section 23.3, "Report Viewing Features"

• Section 23.4, "New Property for LDAP Security Model"

23.1 Support for CSV Output

You can use Comma Separated Value (CSV) as an output type for any report with a simple <rowset>/<row> data structure. Support for this output type is based on the structure of the data. No template is required.

23.2 Report Definition Features

The following new features have been added to enhance options when defining reports:

• BI Publisher's data template data source provides native support for BLOB, CLOB, long, and raw data types.

• When defining parameters for a report, if you select Menu as the parameter type, then you have the option under the "Can select all" box to choose between "Null value passed" and "All values passed". Previously, selecting "all" passed a null value by default.

• The following properties are added to the Runtime Configuration page:

  • RTF Output: Default Font - enter the default font name and size (for example: Arial:12) to use when no font is defined. This is particularly useful for controlling the sizing of empty table cells in generated reports.

  • HTML Output: Use percentage width for table columns - set this property to True to render table columns according to a percentage value of the total width of the table rather than as a value in points.

  • FO Processing:

    • Disable external references - a "True" setting (default) disallows the importing of secondary files such as subtemplates or other XML documents during XSL processing and XML parsing. This increases the security of the system. Set this to "False" if the report or template calls external files.

    • FO Parsing Buffer Size - (default 1,000,000) sets the size of the buffer for the FO Processor. When the buffer is full, the elements from the buffer are rendered in the report. Reports with large tables or crosstabs might require a larger buffer to properly render those objects in the report. Increase the size of the buffer at the report level for these reports. Note that increasing this value affects the memory consumption of the system.

23.3 Report Viewing Features

The following new features are available from the View report page:

• Views created in the online Analyzer can be saved as templates.

• When in View mode, you see "Link to this Report" displayed on the page. This selection enables you to capture the URL of the currently viewed report. The Link to this Report selection has four options:

  • Current Page

  • No Header

  • No Parameters

  • Document Only

23.4 New Property for LDAP Security Model

For the LDAP security model, a new property, Group Retrieval Size, has been added. This property enables support of the LDAPv3 control extension for simple paging of search results. By default, pagination is not used. If this property is provided, then the value determines the number of results to return on a page (for example, 200).

The LDAP server must support control type 1.2.840.113556.1.4.319 to support this feature, such as OID 10.1.4. See your LDAP server documentation for information on support of this control type. For more information about LDAP pagination and the required control type, see the article: RFC 2696 - LDAP Control Extension for Simple Paged Results Manipulation (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2696.html) .