Recent Posts by Tim Dexter

Had a request today asking how to get started with the BIP API layer. I think the use of the APIs is straightforward enough, there are lots of examples to get you started in the developer sections of the user guide. The tough bit is, what libraries and jars need to be in the class path to be able to work with the APIs without annoying compile errors? So heres the list: xdocore.jar  - the core BIP/XMLP library aolj.jar - this is an Oracle EBS library, we need it whether you're...

Apologies for the tenuous title, I went looking for a synonym for today's subject and came up with this, anyway, moving on ... Have you ever created a summary column, run your template against some data only to find it either falls over or you get that friendly 'NaN' entry in your output frustrating isnt it? Just to clear up one thing, 'NaN' means surprisingly enough, 'Not a Number', if you want to know more check out the definition here. The most common cause of the issue is...

This is something for the future, the not too distant future and in BIP terms thats not long ... this week I have been taking a look at Adobe Flex 2.0. Its a very rich interface to build data enabled templates. The BIP server will support them in a coming release allowing you to build very rich interactive interfaces for your reports, schedule and deliver them to your users as complete self contained reports. I have to admit, I got extrememly frustrated initially,...

Here's an interesting problem that hit my inbox this morning that had me scratching my head for a while. I need to create the following output: Employee: Ted Higgins Jon Swanson Ivor Problem Helen Back easy  I hear you say, but heres the catch - no tables allowed!Ahhh ... you have me ... well at least for a while. BIP has a little know feature that allows you to show data inline, 'for-each@inlines:XXXXX', the user guide goes some way to explain, the best way to find out whats going...

The name is a bit of a mouthful when combined with the release version but  some of you may have noticed but maybe not? that there is a new version of the BIP Enterprise server out there. Not 'hot off the presses' news I know ... its been here for a few weeks now but hidden under the skirts of the latest BIEE release.  It has alot of new functionality across the board and I'll cover some of that over coming entries. Today, BIEE Integration points, a lazy post for me...

One of the lesser known and probably even lesser used features we have provided is to support MSWord shape and clipart support ... you know those shapes you use mainly in Powerpoint but sometimes where a simple diagram is needed in Word or you want a goofy piece of clipart in your document.Its a cool feature but how can you use it in a reporting context? Well the extension of the simple shape support is the ability to manipulate the shapes, you can dulplicate along x and y...

We have had quite a few enquiries about how BIP might/can integrate with an Oracle Forms application. I have been doing some digging and testing but again I need to thank another Oracle team for doing all the leg work. Jurgen Menge and his sales consulting team in Germany have been looking at this for a while and come up with multiple possibilities, each of course with thier own pros and cons. So if you are looking for a way to integrate your Oracle Forms application with BIP...

When it comes down to it, XMLP is a great reporting tool inside the E Business Suite but the greatest value is that offered by the products that use it and provide enhanced reporting functionality to their users. 11i10 got the ball rolling with the HRMS, Purchasing, Contracts, Advanced Collections and other teams moving some of their reporting functionality over to XMLP. In the case of Advanced Collections they jumped in a the deep end and based all of their reporting on XMLP...

Charts charts charts ... yep XMLP/BIP can do em ... in fact it can do about 30 different types but the Insert Chart dialog of the template builder now only exposes about 6 of them, with a few bells and whistles ... if you want to go further then you have to get coding. I've covered some alternatives for the coding in previous posts but Im now posting what I hope is going to be a useful 'cheat sheet' for some of the tougher chart styles. Again, thanks to another Oracle...