Publishing Reports

Publishing refers to the way a report is delivered to end users. When it comes to reports, both paper and web-based reports are used in almost every organization. It is, therefore, a requirement that any reporting tool be flexible enough to publish reports in a variety of different formats. Optimally, the reporting tool would allow these reports to be published in these different formats without requiring any significant changes to the code or structure of the report. As we ll discuss in this chapter, Oracle Reports 10 g allows developers to publish reports in the following formats with virtually no modification to the report itself:

Paper layout:
- RTF (Rich Text Format) Allows report to be opened in Microsoft Word, StarOffice, or OpenOffice
- PDF (Portable Document Format) Allows report to be opened and viewed in Adobe Acrobat
- HTML/HTMLCSS For printing from a web page
Web layout:
- JSP (JavaServer Pages)
- HTML/HTMLCSS?CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets
- XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

Delivering the finished report to those who need access to it is not a task to be taken lightly. While the simplest method (that of making the report available on a web server and having users access it through a web browser) is relatively simple to implement, other delivery methods can be more demanding. Luckily, Oracle Reports 10 g provides numerous methods of delivering the finished report. These methods include:

File
Printer
Cache (to be displayed directly in a browser)
E-mail (via SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
Oracle Portal 10 g
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)