All,

I have no experience with Oracle 9i, however I'm trying to assist
another group at work track changes to Oracle 9i Reports in CVS. I'm
looking for someone to share suggestions on approaches that have
worked for them. As it stands right now, the exported files have the
extension ".RDF" and are in a binary format. While this can be stored
in CVS, it is not very efficient (i.e. each rev is a new copy, change
diff between versions, etc). Can Oracle Reports export to standard
text files?

The platforms in use are: Windows XP and IBM AIX (which holds the CVS
repository). The CVS standbox can either be on Windows (we'll use
TortoiseCVS) or via copying (scp or ftp) on AIX with the normal CVS
client.

I'll reply to this post with my findings, however your input is
appreciated.

Kind regards,
-Randy Galbraith

RandyG271 (randyg271 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com) wrote:
: All,

: I have no experience with Oracle 9i, however I'm trying to assist
: another group at work track changes to Oracle 9i Reports in CVS. I'm
: looking for someone to share suggestions on approaches that have
: worked for them. As it stands right now, the exported files have the
: extension ".RDF" and are in a binary format. While this can be stored
: in CVS, it is not very efficient (i.e. each rev is a new copy, change
: diff between versions, etc). Can Oracle Reports export to standard
: text files?

In 10G I like .jsp format, but the save as... menu has other options as
well.

I'm not sure when the formats became available, so 9i may or may not have
those options.

On May 30, 5:52 am, y... (AT) vtn1 (DOT) victoria.tc.ca (Malcolm Dew-Jones)
wrote:
in all versions of reports is an option to convert the rdf file into a
rex file.
The rex file is a ASCII file.

In reports 6i and 10GR1 you can find this option in the menu File/
Administration/Convert

In reports 9.0.4.2.0 and 10GR2 in the menu Tools/File conversion

Malcolm, Fred,

Thanks for the reply. I saw the File - Save As - jsp option, however
when I tried to read back the results Oracle Reports stop with a debug
report dialog (not sure why).

Are you checking your jsp's into CVS (or some other source control
system)? I ask, because I wonder how the resulting file changes from
revision to revision. Depending on how Oracle exports to this format
it may work very well with CVS or very poorly.

Fred, I hadn't seen the option for rex output -- thanks for pointing
me towards that. I'll research that option.

Kind regards,
-Randy Galbraith

RandyG271 (randyg271 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com) wrote:
: Malcolm, Fred,

: Thanks for the reply. I saw the File - Save As - jsp option, however
: when I tried to read back the results Oracle Reports stop with a debug
: report dialog (not sure why).

I commonly edit the JSPs using a text editor, and I sometimes use
RCS to save revisions. I have altered the line ending from CRLF to LF
with no problem, and even messed up the structure slightly without major
problems when re-opening the JSP file in report builder.

CVS is similar enough to RCS, so I wouldn't see any big reason it wouldn't
work.

Perhaps keyword replacement is happening. E.g. if the file contained
something like $Date then that might be altered, which might mess
something up.

Even though I have altered the line endings without problems, I would
normally check that they were not being altered.

If there is some kind of binary/text differentiation in your interface
with CVS then perhaps that has to be set correctly.

I must admit I normally save using RDF, not JSP. I use JSP for just some
tasks, like merging two reports, or checking differences, so perhaps it's
more flakey than I realize.

$0.10

Malcolm,

I haven't actually checked anything yet into CVS. All I did was a
Save As .jsp, followed by File - Close, then File - Open the .jsp.
This results in:

REP-0002: Unable to retrieve a string from the Report Builder message
file.

If I click OK it seems to open without problems. Trying to use .xml
format though does not work. A File - Open fails with:

REP-6102: Failed to start the XML parser.

and...

REP-6104: Invalid XML report definition.

A few times of this, then results in the infamous "Reports Builder has
encountered a problem and needs to close" [Debug] [Close] dialog.

My conclusion is using .jsp will probably work for me and it obviously
does for you. While Fred suggested the .rex format, I think this will
be awkward for our developers since it is a "conversion" step from
Tools - File Conversion menu, with no direct support (that I can see)
to save and open in the .rex format.

On another note, for any who might be following this thread -- I just
saw today Oracle has its own SCM tool, which is available inside the
Reports IDE. Any positive or negative experience out there using this
tool? Since Reports can integrate with a SCM, might it be possible to
integrate directly with CVS?

Regards,
-Randy Galbraith

Malcolm,

I haven't actually checked anything yet into CVS. All I did was a
Save As .jsp, followed by File - Close, then File - Open the .jsp.
This results in:

REP-0002: Unable to retrieve a string from the Report Builder message
file.

If I click OK it seems to open without problems. Trying to use .xml
format though does not work. A File - Open fails with:

REP-6102: Failed to start the XML parser.

and...

REP-6104: Invalid XML report definition.

A few times of this, then results in the infamous "Reports Builder has
encountered a problem and needs to close" [Debug] [Close] dialog.

My conclusion is using .jsp will probably work for me and it obviously
does for you. While Fred suggested the .rex format, I think this will
be awkward for our developers since it is a "conversion" step from
Tools - File Conversion menu, with no direct support (that I can see)
to save and open in the .rex format.

On another note, for any who might be following this thread -- I just
saw today Oracle has its own SCM tool, which is available inside the
Reports IDE. Any positive or negative experience out there using this
tool? Since Reports can integrate with a SCM, might it be possible to
integrate directly with CVS?

Regards,
-Randy Galbraith

Another reporting tool for Oracle is here http://groups.google.it/group/DataTime

On 29 Mag, 20:04, RandyG271 <randyg... (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote: