Importing BI Publisher Sub-template to the Main Template for Testing local environment

Recently I was working on BI publisher RTF template and I had several Sub-templates to be included into the main template. Firstly, I wanted to test these Sub-templates locally before pushing it to development environment. I tried what PeopleBooks were suggested. The PeopleBooks says;

Testing a Sub-Template in Microsoft Word

You should test your template and sub-template using Template Builder before uploading to PeopleTools to make your sub-template is accessible to your template on the file system.

Use the following syntax when importing:

<?import:file:C:///Template_Directory/subtemplate_file.rtf?>

Notice the triple slashes and the use of the actual file name instead of template ID.

When your design is complete, you can change the import statement back to make the sub-template available to the main template in PeopleTools environment.

I followed the same syntax above. However, I could not work it out as I was having these errors when I try to preview the main RTF template as a PDF. After bit of a research I found out that I need to include these custom properties in the xdo.xfg file.

<property name="xdk-secure-io-mode">false</property>
<property name="xslt-scalable">true</property>

Meaning of each property and their values as follows;

Here are some of the references I checked while figuring out this issue

• https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E41633_01/pt853pbh1/eng/pt/txml/task_DefiningSystemProperties-d67e77.html
• https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/12211/bip/BIPAD/GUID-9D988F03-8CBD-4A0C-B8DA-93986843C0B8.htm#BIPAD320
• https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E87544_01/pt856pbr1/eng/pt/txml/task_UsingRTFTemplates-997f94.html?pli=ul_d81e52_txml
• http://bipconsulting.blogspot.com/2009/11/common-header-and-footer-with-sub.html

Read More»

PeopleTools Tables related to BI/XML Publisher

• PSXPDATASRC - Data Source definition table for BI Publisher
• PSXPRPTCAT - Report Category table, which controls author access to the report definition
• PSXPRPTCATAUTH - Authorization definition for report categories.
• PSXPPRTDEFN - Report definition table for BI Publisher
• PSXPPRTOUTFMT - Defines output format allowed and default output format for each report definition
• PSXPRPTSCOPEFLD - Stores information required for bursting
• PSXPRPTSRCHKEYS - This table defines extra search keys available in BIP report manager after report output is published.
• PSXPRPTTTMPL - Defines association between report definition and template definition.
• PSXPRPTTMPLCTRL - This table defines values that control template selection at report runtime.
• PSXPRPTVIEWER - Defines per-report viewer access
• PSXPSCHEMAFLMN - Schema files
• PSXPSMPLDTMN - Sample XML data
• PSXPTMPLDEFN  - This table stores template (including sub-template) definition for BI Publisher. Template definition has effective-dated template files as a child object.
• PSXPTMPLFIELDEF - This table stores template file definition.
• PSXPTMPLOUTFMT - This table stores the output formats for templates
• PSXPTMPLTRINFO - Manage information associated with transaction files (XLIFF) for templates
• PSXPTMPLTYPE - This table stores template types. The output type for each template type is stored in a child table: PSXPTMPLOUTTYPE
• PSXP_FILEURL - Stores the URLs of XMLP output files
• PSXP_RATTR_TBL - Report attributes table to store Name Value pairs of a report. Used in report folder implementations
• PSFILEDEFN - Stores template file information
• PSFILEDATA - Stores template file information
• XPQRYRUNCNTL -Run control table for Query-based XMLP reports
• XPQRYRUNPARM - XMLP Query run control parameters

Read More»

How to correctly generate BI/XML publisher Excel output from RTF template

While ago I had a issue where BI publisher which was not correctly generating Excel output format file. This particular problem happened with delivered report, SSR_TSRPT which is the Transcript Report in campus solutions. We have customised the delivered report by adding our own version of template file to the report definition. The Template File is of RTF format and the report output was defaulted to XLS format type.


The problem was it generated the report in Excel format and it was generating the file in .xlsx format and the RTF to Excel conversion was not happy with the new format. Bit of dig around and I found out that due to the new PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.53 upgrade for the BI Publisher, PeopleSoft has added new configurations to the PeopleTools settings to control report attributes that are specific to PeopleSoft implementation of BI Publisher. The specific property is “psxp_excel_outputformat”. According to PeopleBooks;

So to make it compatible with older versions of Excel and to generate the output correctly, I modified properties of the report by changing psxp_excel_outputformat to XLS-MHTML format as described above, the changes are imposed in report level as follows;

Read More»

How to Add Non-Default Font to BI Publisher Report in PeopleSoft

Oracle BI publisher for peoplesoft, support limited number of default-font types. However, when you want to add another font which is not a default font type delivered by BI publisher your report will not display the appropriate font you want. 
In order to change the font you want, you have to take a configuration change in BI publisher. 
BI Publisher system properties settings are defined in the xdo.cfg file. The default xdo.cfg file is located in the $PSHOME/appserver directory, which is shared by all application server and process scheduler domains by default.
For example you want to use font say "Bodoni MT" which is not a default font configured in BI Publisher settings in Application Server. 
Therefore, a xdo.cfg BI publisher config file in App server need to be modified to include "Bodoni MT" font. 
Here is the example xdo.cfg file with added Bodoni MT font. 

<config version="1.0.0" xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/config/"> 
    <!-- Properties --> 
    <properties> 
        <!-- System level properties --> 

        <!-- PLEASE SELECT A VALID TEMPFILE DIRECTORY!!! --> 
        <property name="system-temp-dir">c:/Temp</property> 

        <!-- PDF compression --> 
        <property name="pdf-compression">true</property> 

        <!-- PDF security --> 
        <property name="pdf-security">false</property> 
        <property name="pdf-open-password">user</property> 
        <property name="pdf-permissions-password">owner</property> 
        <property name="pdf-no-printing">true</property> 
        <property name="pdf-no-changing-the-document">true</property> 
    </properties> 


   <!-- Font setting --> 
    <fonts> 

      <!-- Windows Wingdings font --> 
      <font family="Wingdings" style="normal" weight="normal"> 
       <truetype path="C:\WINNT\fonts\wingding.ttf" /> 
      </font> 

      <font family="GnuMICR" style="normal" weight="normal"> 
       <truetype path="C:\WINNT\fonts\GnuMICR.ttf" /> 
      </font> 

      <font family="Times New Roman" style="normal" weight="normal"> 
       <truetype path="C:\windows\Fonts\times.ttf" /> 
      </font> 

      <font family="3 of 9 Barcode" style="normal" weight="normal"> 
       <truetype path="C:\WINNT\fonts\3of9.ttf" /> 
      </font> 
       
      <font family="Bodoni MT" style="normal" weight="normal"> 
       <truetype path="C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\BOD_R.TTF" /> 
      </font> 

    </fonts> 
</config> 

to add a font, add font element (see example above for Bodoni MT) and set the truetype path as above.

Read More»