8.10 Printing Report Regions
Configure a report region to print by exporting it to several different formats.
Tip:
You must enable network services to use report printing if you configured an external print server. See Enabling Network Services in Oracle Database.
- About Report Printing
- About Printing Reports to PDF
- Configuring Report Printing at the Application-Level
- About Classic Report Printing Methods
- Configuring Classic Report Print Attributes
- About Report Queries
- About Report Layouts
See Also:
Parent topic: Developing Reports
8.10.1 About Report Printing
By taking advantage of region report printing, your application users can view and print reports that have a predefined orientation, page size, column headings, and page header and footer. Classic reports, interactive reports and interactive grids also have the ability to export to PDF, Microsoft Excel, HTML, and Comma Separated Values (CSV). Additional export formats require the use of an external print server.
Oracle Application Express provides three report printing configuration options:
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None (Native) - Select this option if you do not use an external print server. This option enables you to use the basic printing functionality, which includes CSV, HTML, PDF and XLSX.
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Oracle BI Publisher - This option requires a valid license of Oracle BI Publisher (also known as Oracle XML Publisher). This option enables you to take report query results and convert them from XML to RTF format using Oracle BI Publisher. Select this option to upload your own customized RTF or XSL-FO templates for printing reports within Application Express.
Oracle BI Publisher supports Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Word Rich Text Format (RTF), or Microsoft Excel format (XLS), or Extensible Markup Language (XML). If you choose to use other third-party rendering engines, other output formats can also be configured.
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External (Apache FOP) - Select this option if you are using Apache FOP on an external J2EE server. This option enables you to use the basic printing functionality, which includes creating report queries and printing report regions using the default templates provided in Application Express and using your own customized XSL-FO templates.
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Oracle REST Data Services - Select this option if you are using the Oracle REST Data Services (formerly called Application Express Listener) release 2.0 or later. This option enables you to use the basic printing functionality, which includes creating report queries and printing report regions using the default templates provided in Application Express and using your own customized XSL-FO templates.
Note:
The Oracle REST Data Services option does not require an external print server, instead the report data and style sheet are downloaded to the listener, rendered into PDF format by the listener and then sent to the client. The PDF documents in this setup are not returned back into the database, thus the print APIs are not supported when using the Oracle REST Data Services-based configuration.
Note:
The functionality to produce PDF Reports has been removed in Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) release 19.4.
Note:
Your Oracle Application Express instance administrator can change the report printing configuration for your instance. See "Configuring Report Printing for an Instance" in Oracle APEX Administration Guide
Parent topic: Printing Report Regions
8.10.2 About Printing Reports to PDF
Oracle Application Express has native support to print basic reports to PDF. Use a report server if you want full control and advanced layouts for your reports.
Parent topic: Printing Report Regions
8.10.3 Configuring Report Printing at the Application-Level
To configure report printing at the application-level:
Note:
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Configuring Report Printing in a Full Development Environment in Oracle APEX Administration Guide
Parent topic: Printing Report Regions
8.10.4 About Classic Report Printing Methods
There are two ways to print classic report regions:
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Configure Printing Attributes for a Report Region. You can print a report region by configuring the Printing Attributes for the region. See Configuring Classic Report Print Attributes,
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Create a Report Query. You can print a report by defining a report query as a Shared Component. See Printing a Report Region by Defining a Report Query
Both report regions and report queries can be downloaded in the following formats:
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PDF - Adobe Portable Document Format.
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RTF - Microsoft Word Rich Text Format.
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Excel - Microsoft Excel format. Note that when BI Publisher is configured as print server and a custom report layout is specified, the export is not a true
.xls
file because the content is HTML-based. -
HTML
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XML - Extensible Markup Language.
To format either a report region or report query, you associate it with a report layout.
Tip:
You can also have the output format specified by an item that determines the output format at runtime. Select the item that holds the format value. Valid values are PDF, RTF (to open the document in Microsoft Word), XLS (to open the document in Microsoft Excel) and HTML (to download the document as an HTML file).
Parent topic: Printing Report Regions
8.10.5 Configuring Classic Report Print Attributes
To configure a classic report region for printing:
See Also:
-
Configuring Report Printing for an Instance in Oracle APEX Administration Guide
Parent topic: Printing Report Regions
8.10.6 About Report Queries
You can print a report region by defining a report query as a Shared Component. A report query identifies the data to be extracted. Unlike SQL statements contained in regions, report queries contain SQL statements that are validated when you save the query. Note that report queries must be SQL statements, not functions returning SQL statements.
Parent topic: Printing Report Regions
8.10.7 About Report Layouts
To format either a classic report region or report query, you associate it with a report layout. Using report layouts renders the data in a printer-friendly format. If you do not select a report layout, a default XSL-FO layout is used. The default XSL-FO layout is always used for rendering Interactive Report regions.
Parent topic: Printing Report Regions