White Paper on Custom PDF Reports in APEX

As I’ve previously blogged about and outlined in my video tutorials, it is now possible to create custom PDF reports with APEX 4.2.2 using the APEX Listener 2.0.2 and third-party tools like Altova Stylevision or Stylus Studio. To help our customers getting started with this, we’ve just released a white paper that outlines the system requirements, explains the configuration steps and options and then walks you through the creation of PDF reports using custom layouts step by step. The white paper is available on out Oracle Application Express OTN page:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex/application-express/apex-white-papers-1866964.html

PDF Reports with APEX at NYOUG

The New York Oracle User Group Summer Meeting takes place on June 5^th at St. John's University, right next to the World Trade Center in Downtown Manhattan. This looks like it’s going to be a very interesting meeting for Oracle DBAs and Oracle Developers. There are two session scheduled covering the Oracle Database 12c and also two APEX sessions. There’s going to be a session on building mobile apps with APEX, which looks to be very hands-on. And I’ll be showing how to build custom PDF reports with APEX. I’ll walk you step by step through creating the report in APEX, downloading the XML, creating a report layout with tools like Stylevision, loading the layout back into APEX and associating the layout with your report. If you have a laptop running APEX 4.2.2 and the APEX Listener 2.0.2, you’re welcome to bring it and follow along – you will need at least a trial version of either Altova Stylevision or Stylus Studio.

Details about this event can be found on the NYOUG website:

http://nyoug.org/upcoming_events.htm#General_Meeting

APEX-Community meets Development - Munich, May 16th

Mark your calendars for May 16^th. Following the Cloud World events in London and Munich on May 14^th and 15^th, we’re organizing an APEX Community day at the Oracle office in Munich, Germany on Thursday, May 16th. I’ll be showing the just-release APEX 4.2.2, talk about what’s new, what to consider when upgrading and we'll do a demonstration of some of the PDF printing enhancements in this release. Then we’re going to take a look at our upgraded packaged applications and sample applications, including a demonstration of our newly added Survey Builder. And with APEX 5.0 development on the way, we’re also going to take a look at some of the features we’re currently working on and of course I’d be happy to discuss your questions, suggestions and feature requests during our meeting.

A detailed agenda and information on how to sign up for this free event can be found here:

APEX-Community meets Development: Munich, May 16th, 2013

Oracle OTN Developer Day in New York on May 7th

Are you interested in developing and running your Oracle Application Express applications on the Cloud? And do you want to learn more about Oracle’s Database Cloud Service? Then join us on May 7 at the Oracle OTN Developer Day in New York. At this event, you will be able to network with peers and Oracle experts while learning about Oracle Cloud's Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings and the speed, flexibility, and productivity they offer.

I’ll be doing an Oracle Cloud overview presentation in the morning and then we'll do a Database Cloud Hands-On lab with you in the afternoon. You’ll get hands-on experience with the Oracle Database Cloud and learn about our suite of packaged productivity applications. You’ll learn how to load bulk data to the Oracle Database Cloud, build applications on this data, add reports and charts, setup RESTful webservices and  build and deploy mobile web apps – all as part of this free workshop.

Register today!

PDF Printing with Oracle Application Express 4.2.2

Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 was released today, you can download the full release from the Download page on OTN. As always, there have been numerous improvements and bug fixes. We’ve updated many of our included packaged applications and we’ve introduced a new packaged application: the Survey Builder, which you can use to easily create and run surveys.

With APEX 4.2.2 and the APEX Listener 2.0 we’re also introducing a number of report printing enhancements. Using the APEX Listener for PDF printing has been added as a third option in addition to using Apache FOP or Oracle BI Publisher as external print rendering engine. The main difference in using the APEX Listener for PDF printing is that the FOP libraries are actually built into the Lister, thus no complicated configuration of an external engine is required in this setup. All that’s required is to log into the APEX Instance Administration, select the APEX Listener as the Print Server, and then enable PDF printing for your Classic Reports, Interactive Reports or Report Queries.

And unless you’re calling the APEX Print APIs directly in your custom PL/SQL code, you also won’t have to enable networking services in the Oracle database anymore, because the APEX Listener based printing option loads your reports straight to the APEX Listener, which then renders them in PDF format and downloads them to your browser.

To help you get started with using the APEX Listener for PDF Printing I’ve created a short video that walks you through the configuration steps in the APEX Instance Administration and then shows you how to create a simple report with PDF export enabled:

We’ve also improved support for custom XSL-FO layouts in APEX 4.2.2. This means, you can now more easily customize your PDF reports to your requirements using third-party tools like Altova Stylevision or Stylus Studio that allow for drag and drop layout of XSLT stylesheets. So if you have a Report Query or Classic Report Region, you can now simply download your report data in XML format and use this XML data as the data source for any of these tools. Once loaded into the tool, all components of your report data, including information about your application, page, report region, user name as well as session state can be easily included in the layout via drag and drop. Once you completed your layout, you can safe it as a XSLT 1.0 file and upload this file into APEX as a report layout (under Shared Components). Now you can update your report query or classic report region to use this custom layout when exporting your report in PDF format.

I’ve created a second video, which walks your through all the details. Starting with the sample app created in the first video, I’m showing you how to export your report in XML format, load this XML file into Altova Stylevision or Stylus Studio, then I'm demonstrating how to use these tools to create custom layouts and finally how to upload your completed layouts and use them for your reports in APEX:

Oracle Cloud World - London May 14th & Munich May 15th

I’ll be presenting Oracle Application Express as part of the Oracle Database Cloud Service at the Cloud World events in London and Munich next month.

At Oracle Cloud World you’ll hear from Oracle executives, thought leaders, customers, and partners as they share ideas on how to transform business and stay ahead of your competition through technologies like cloud, social, and mobile.

In addition to keynote sessions highlighting Oracle’s strategy and roadmap for cloud and social, Oracle CloudWorld offers tracks specifically for:

•       Line-of-business leaders in sales and marketing, customer service and support, HR and talent management, and finance and operations

•       IT Professionals that support the above lines of business

•       Oracle Database Cloud Services and Oracle Java Cloud Services

Here’s the information on my session:

Develop With the Oracle Database You Know and Love, Now in the Cloud

Developing applications to run on the world's leading database? Why not do it in the cloud? See the process for signing up for and provisioning Oracle Database Cloud Services, loading data, developing applications with Oracle Application Express, and creating RESTful Web services. This end-to-end presentation introduces the major components of Oracle Database Cloud Services and explores its use.

Register today for these free events:

London: Tuesday, 14 May 2013, 08:15 – 18:30, ExCel Center, ICC Capital Suite, Agenda and Registration

Munich: Wednesday, 15 May 2013, 9:00 – 19:00, The Westin Grand München, Agenda and Registration

APEX at the NYOUG Special Winter Meeting

Just back from the DOAG conference (German Oracle User Group) in Nuremberg, it’s now time to get ready for an event closer to home: the annual NYOUG Special Winter Meeting at The New Yorker Hotel on December 12. If you’re interested in APEX and the Oracle Database, please stop by - you’ll have a busy day.

Willie Hardie, Vice President for Oracle Database Management will kick things off at 9:30am with his keynote on “What’s next for the Oracle Database". Right after that - at 10:30 - I’ll be talking about what’s new in Oracle Application Express 4.2. 

Later – at 2pm – you can hear about "Responsive Web Design in Oracle Application Express with HTML5 and CSS3" from Shakeeb Rahman and then finish the afternoon with Josh Millinger’s "The Maturity of Tabular Forms". 

Looking forward to seeing you at the NYOUG Special Winter Meeting. You can find the full agenda, including abstracts on all sessions here:

http://nyoug.org/upcoming_events.htm#General_Meeting1