Output report in pdf or text at user's will

[kakeez]

Just a general question,

Is it possible to have a report setup in such a way that the users chooses whether the output will be in pdf or text. The way we have it right now is we have multiple copies of report such as:

Report1--pdf
Report1--txt

and depending on the wish of the user he runs either the first or the second. It would be nice to have ONE report instead with a parameter with values say ('pdf', 'txt') and that would output the corresponsing format.

 

[kakeez]

After some reseatching the issue, I noted that there are two parameter involved (system parameters)

ESFORMAT and :MODE

I tried setting ESFORMAT in afterformtrigger to either 'PDF'or'TXT' but it complains for 'PDF' saying:

"Character mode runtime incompatible with DESFORMAT PDF"

at which point I tried to dynamically set :MODE to either 'DEFAULT' or 'BITMAP' right before setting ESFORMAT to 'pdf'. However same error occurs

 

[nagornyi]

Set the MODE to Defauld in the Parameter's Property Palette.

 

[kakeez]

The MODE is actually set to the Default in the Property Palette.

The thing is this report is ran from Oracle Application. It is defined there as a concurrent program with an output to text (one has to chose one and only one type of output when defining the report in Oracle Application). So What I think is happening is that no matter what values I put for MODE in Report Builder, the values passed in by Oracle Application takes precedence.

 

[nagornyi]

You are right. For Oracle Applications there is no alternative to having two reports. Actually, it can bae the same report, but two cuncurrent programs defined for each type of output.