XML Publisher

XML Publisher is a simple engine. It needs only 3 input values to generate report.
1.Data to display on report(in XML format)
2.Layout model/presentation(in XSL-FO format or RTF)
3.Final output type (PDF, Doc, HTML, etc)

Points to Note:
o XML publisher doesn’t care about how you are generating xml data. Only it needs is, your actual data(text file, excel file, data in DB) must be converted in xml format(calling XML Data) as input to the engine. To get this, you can write your own xml data or use Oracle Reports to generate xml data or use any other third party tools to generate xml data from actual data.
o XSL-FO stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects. Used to present XML Data in readable and user friendly format. But normal user understands very little in this, so there is an alternative i.e. user friendly RTF. You do presentation work on RTF file and give this as input to the XML Publisher engine. XML Publisher converts RTF into XSL-FO.

What is new here?
We are using Oracle Reports(rdf file) to generate XML data.

Run CP
|
———–Oracle Reports(RDF)—–>Generates XML Data–>
| |—>XML Pub Engine–>CP Output(in PDF or etc)
–Finds template from XML Publihser Admin resp–>RTF file–>

Summary Steps:
1. Create Oracle Report(XXXX_TEST.rdf)
2. Define/Register Concurrent Program(XXXX_TEST)
3. Create Template Definition and Template(XXXX_TEST.rtf)
4. Run CP and Show XML Publisher report in PDF format(XXXX_TEST_OUTPUT.pdf)