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Entering the URLTo run a report from the Web, the URL calling the reports CGI engine is called in the following fashion via a Web browser:

http://localhost/ows-bin/r25cgi32.exe?report=a:\A_17_03.rdf+userid=system
/manager+desformat=HTML

It is important to note that the r25cgi32.exe portion of the URL is case-sensitive. The preceding command will output the report in an HTML format. To output the report in a PDF format, I entered the following URL in my Web browser:

http://localhost/ows-bin/r25cgi32.exe?report=a:\A_17_03.rdf+userid=system
/manager+desformat=PDF

The PDF option will require that the Adobe Acrobat reader plug-in is configured for your browser.

Reports URL Mapping FeatureThe reports mapping feature documented in the books for Developer 2000 does not function at all in the 1.4W release. This feature is supposed to let you hard-code in various reports parameters while allowing others to be entered dynamically on the URL line. I was told by Oracle support that this feature currently does not work. After finding this out, I removed the variable (REPORTS25_CGIMAP) from the system registry. However, I was still having problems getting the reports to run again afterward. After carefully reading the documentation, I discovered that this feature is enabled by either using the fore-mentioned variable or by placing a file called CGICMD.DAT in the ORACLE_HOME\report25 directory. That was where I put this file and the name that I used (see Figure 19.10). After renaming the file, the Web reports started working again.

FIG. 19.10
An Oracle Web Report
displayed in HTML
format.


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Summary

That is all there is to it. Now that all of the initial configuration hurdles have been overcome, moving more forms and reports to the Web will be as simple as creating an HTML file or a hyperlink on a Web page (depending on your forms and reports implementation). Oracle had a good suggestion in their Designer 2000 documentation, which was to have a predefined page on your Web site that contains links to all the Web-enabled systems. This way, you do not have to send out cryptic URLs to end users that may be misentered. Additionally, URLs may be changed at any time on this page and not impact user bookmarks.

To wrap things up, here is a quick outline of the tasks performed to Web-enable Oracle forms and reports:

From Here…

The next chapter shows you how to develop a template employee information system.

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PART VII

Complete Template System

20 Developing a Template Employee Information System525

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