This topic describes how to create Flash templates. BI Publisher's support for Flash templates enables you to develop Adobe Flex templates that can be applied to BI Publisher reports to generate interactive Flash output documents.
This chapter demonstrates how to build a simple Flex template, but Adobe Flex allows you to build far more complex interactive reports for your users.
The animation, "wiring" together and formatting of layout objects can be achieved with Flex. You can also summarize and create calculated fields on the incoming data. Reference the Flex documentation for these more advanced features.
Note:
Adobe Flex is an open-source technology for building interactive cross-platform applications. Flex applications can be delivered using Adobe Flash Player.BI Publisher's integration with Flex enables you to build Flex templates, test them on your desktop, and deploy them to the BI Publisher server to generate Flash output. Users are then able to run the reports from the BI Publisher user interface or schedule them for delivery to report consumers.
This chapter describes how to set up a Flex template with a BI Publisher "flat" data source (that is, there is no hierarchy in the XML data) and how to include simpler objects such as tables and charts. For more information about interactivity, connectivity between components and more advanced topics, refer to Adobe's Flex documentation.
You must perform the following tasks before using Flash templates.
Following are the prerequisites for building and viewing Flash templates:
For viewing output:
To view the report output from the Flash Template, you must have Adobe Flash Player 9 installed on your computer. If viewing reports over the BI Publisher user interface, the Web browser must also support the Adobe Flash Player 9 plug-in.
For building templates:
The FlexBuilder IDE from Adobe
Oracle BI Publisher is currently certified with version 2.0.1. The tool can be downloaded and purchased from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/.
Note that the charting functionality requires an additional license fee.
A report data model set up in BI Publisher that generates flat XML. For information on setting up the data model, see the Data Modeling Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.
Tightened security settings in the latest versions of Adobe Reader (9.3) disable multimedia content like Flash by default.
Because of this change, when accessing PDF report output that contains embedded Flash objects, users might get an error message such as "Some features are disabled to avoid potential security risks."
To enable Flash content in PDF output by modifying the Flash configuration settings:
This section describes how to build a Flash template.
It includes the following topics:
Adding the Data Source
Creating the Layout
Data Binding
The Flex IDE creates a default canvas for you to drop objects onto. You can modify the canvas as required to suit the report.
Important:
If you intend to embed the Flash output in a PDF document, then you must set the Width and Height of the template in the Size region of the Layout properties. Even if you want to accept the default size, you must explicitly enter values in these fields.
Create the layout by adding report objects to the layout palette. This example uses the Flex Design tab to add the objects to the layout. Click the Design tab to see the available objects in the Component Navigator pane.
The following figure shows an example of the available objects in the Component Navigator pane.
These objects can be dragged and dropped to the design palette.
To create the layout:
Once the layout is complete, you can bind the layout objects to the data source. Here, you can bind the DataGrid and bind the chart.
Flex offers some help through the property palette of the objects to define the binding, but not enough to complete the task. Therefore you must update the MXML directly using the Source editor.
Follow these steps to bind the DataGrid, which is highlighted for you to locate the code easily.
You need to upload the flash template to make it available for report layouts.
To upload the template to the report definition:
The Report Properties page includes a set of properties specific to rendering Flash templates.
These properties enable you to specify the size and placement of the Flash object when you select PDF as the output type.
Note:
To produce PDF output, you must specify the height and width of the template in the Flex Builder. See Creating the Layout.To set properties for the PDF output: