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Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Oracle Reports 12c and DESTYPE=blobdestination

Last week a colleague of mine contacted me to support him for a problem to configure and use Oracle Reports 12c (12.2.1.2.0 and 12.2.1.3.0) with DESTYPE=blobdestination, which means instead of displaying a rendered Report like PDF or XLS or HTML in the Browser to store the generated Report in a LOB into an underlying table in an Oracle Database.

At first you will need to download the BLOBDestination11g.jar (even when its compiled for Oracle Reports 11g, you can use it with Oracle Reports 12c) from My Oracle Support Note 11514155.1 https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocContentDisplay?id=1151455.1

Transfer the BLOBDestination11g.jar to your Server hosting your Oracle Forms & Reports 12c (e.g. /tmp) and copy it as BLOBDestination.jar to $ORACLE_HOME/reports/jlib

# Copy BLOBDestination11g.jar to $ORACLE_HOME/reports/jlib
cd /tmp
cp BLOBDestination11g.jar $ORACLE_HOME/reports/jlib/BLOBDestination.jar

As next we need to create a table which should receive our generated Reports PDF document.

# connect to your application schema and create following table
sqlplus test/Oracle12c@frrepo
SQL> create table executed_reports ( 
 ID            NUMBER NOT NULL
,CREATED_DATE TIMESTAMP DEFAULT SYSDATE
,CREATED_BY   VARCHAR2(20) DEFAULT USER
,REPORT_DOC   BLOB
,FILE_NAME    VARCHAR2(255));

The next part is depending if you are using an Oracle Reports In-Process Server or a Standalone Server.

Configuration for an In-Process Server

Connect to your Server which is hosting your Oracle Forms & Reports 12c environment and navigate to your $DOMAIN_HOME. There you will have to modify your eventually already existing setUserOverrides.sh or create a new setUserOverrides.sh in $DOMAIN_HOME/bin and modify the rwserver.conf configuration file for your In-Process Server

# add following block or 
# create a new setUserOverrides.sh with following block
# and align the Name of the Managed Server for Reports
# and align the ORACLE_HOME_PATH to your ORACLE_HOME

if [ "${SERVER_NAME}" = "<Name_ManagedServer_Reports>" ]; then
   export POST_CLASSPATH=<ORACLE_HOME_PATH>/reports/jlib/BLOBDestination.jar:$POST_CLASSPATH
fi

# e.g.

if [ "${SERVER_NAME}" = "MS_REPORTS" ]; then
   export POST_CLASSPATH=/u00/app/oracle/product/fmw-fr-12.2.1.2.0/reports/jlib/BLOBDestination.jar:$POST_CLASSPATH
fi

Then you will have to modify the rwserver.conf for your In-Process Server and add a new destination type. The rwserver.conf you can find under $DOMAIN_HOME/config/fmwconfig/components/<Name_ManagedServer_Reports>/applications/reports_12.2.1/configuration

# find the line with 
# <destination destype="WebDav" class="oracle.reports.plugin.destination.webdav.DesWebDAV"/>
# and add following line with the new destination type=BLOBDestination

<destination destype="WebDav" class="oracle.reports.plugin.destination.webdav.DesWebDAV"/>
<destination destype="BLOBDestination" class="oracle.reports.plugin.destination.blob.BLOBDestination"/>

Now restart your Managed Server for Reports and you are ready.

To test, just execute a Reports Call directly in your Browser:

http://<Your_Server>:<Port_of_ManagedServer_Reports>/reports/rwservlet?report=<Your_Test_Report>.rdf&userid=<App_User>/<Password>@<TNS_ALIAS>&DESTYPE=blobdestination&DESFORMAT=PDF&DESNAME=http://<App_User>:<Pasword>@<Your_Server>:<Listener_Port>/<ORACLE_SID>/<target_table>/<BLOB_Column>/<ID_Column>/<ID_Value>/<FileName_Column>

e.g.:

http://forms12:9002/reports/rwservlet?report=test.rdf&userid=test/Oracle12c@frrepo&DESTYPE=blobdestination&DESFORMAT=PDF&DESNAME=http://test:Oracle12c@forms12:1521/FRREPO/executed_reports/report_doc/ID/1/file_name

After that you will see in your target table for the Reports a row with your generated Reports PDF Document.

Configuration for a Standalone Reports Server

Connect to your Server which is hosting your Oracle Forms & Reports 12c environment and navigate to your $DOMAIN_HOME/reports/bin. There you will have to modify the reports.sh and modify the rwserver.conf configuration file for your In-Process Server

# Search for REPORTS_CLASSPATH in reports.sh
# and add the BLOBDestination.jar

REPORTS_CLASSPATH=${ORACLE_HOME}/reports/jlib/BLOBDestination.jar:${ORACLE_HOME}/reports/jlib/rwbuilder.jar:${ORACLE_HOME}/reports/jlib/rwrun.jar:${ORACLE_HOME}/jlib/zrclient.jar; export REPORTS_CLASSPATH

Then you will have to modify the rwserver.conf for your Standalone Reports Server and add a new destination type. The rwserver.conf you can find under $DOMAIN_HOME/config/fmwconfig/components/ReportsServerComponent/<Reports_Server_Name>

# find the line with 
# <destination destype="WebDav" class="oracle.reports.plugin.destination.webdav.DesWebDAV"/>
# and add following line with the new destination type=BLOBDestination

<destination destype="WebDav" class="oracle.reports.plugin.destination.webdav.DesWebDAV"/>
<destination destype="BLOBDestination" class="oracle.reports.plugin.destination.blob.BLOBDestination"/>

After that restart your Standalone Reports Server and thats all.

To test, just execute a Reports Call directly in your Browser:

http://<Your_Server>:<Port_of_ManagedServer_Reports>/reports/rwservlet?report=<Your_Test_Report>.rdf&userid=<App_User>/<Password>@<TNS_ALIAS>&DESTYPE=blobdestination&DESFORMAT=PDF&DESNAME=http://<App_User>:<Pasword>@<Your_Server>:<Listener_Port>/<ORACLE_SID>/<target_table>/<BLOB_Column>/<ID_Column>/<ID_Value>/<FileName_Column>

e.g.:

http://forms12:9002/reports/rwservlet?report=test.rdf&userid=test/Oracle12c@frrepo&DESTYPE=blobdestination&DESFORMAT=PDF&DESNAME=http://test:Oracle12c@forms12:1521/FRREPO/executed_reports/report_doc/ID/1/file_name

After that you will see in your target table for the Reports a row with your generated Reports PDF Document.


Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Tracking applied Patches in WebLogic Server outfile

With a small trick you can track your applied patches in your Oracle Software Home on your Oracle WebLogic Server in the outfile.

Simply add -Dweblogic.log.DisplayPatchInfo=true to your already existing setUserOverrides.sh or create a new setUserOverrides.sh in your $DOMAIN_HOME/bin directory.

 # Display applied patches in WebLogic Server outfile
JAVA_OPTIONS="$JAVA_OPTIONS -Dweblogic.log.DisplayPatchInfo=true "

After that just restart your WebLogic Server and you will find in the outfile of your WebLogic Server following entries:

 # Snippet from outfile
<May 9, 2018 9:15:30 AM CEST> <Info> <Management> <BEA-141107> <Version: WebLogic Server 12.2.1.3.0 Thu Aug 17 13:39:49 PDT 2017 1882952
OPatch Patches:
27342434;21933966;Thu Apr 26 16:14:03 CEST 2018;WLS PATCH SET UPDATE 12.2.1.3.180417
26355633;21447583;Thu Aug 31 14:26:20 CEST 2017;One-off
26287183;21447582;Thu Aug 31 14:26:10 CEST 2017;One-off
26261906;21344506;Thu Aug 31 14:25:53 CEST 2017;One-off
26051289;21455037;Thu Aug 31 14:25:48 CEST 2017;One-off>

The provided data in the outfile is in following format:

  1. Patch Number
  2. Unique Patch ID
  3. On which date and time the Patch was applied
  4. Patch description
To crosscheck just run an opatch lsinventory in order to validate the provided data in your outfile:

 cd $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch
./opatch lsinventory | grep applied

Patch  27342434     : applied on Thu Apr 26 16:14:03 CEST 2018
Patch  26355633     : applied on Thu Aug 31 14:26:20 CEST 2017
Patch  26287183     : applied on Thu Aug 31 14:26:10 CEST 2017
Patch  26261906     : applied on Thu Aug 31 14:25:53 CEST 2017
Patch  26051289     : applied on Thu Aug 31 14:25:48 CEST 2017

As you can see, the provided patch data in the outfile of your WebLogic Server is exactly the same as in the opatch utility.