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ORDS PDF printing in APEX desupported - confusion

MatthiasHoysJan 2 2020 — edited Jan 3 2020

Hi,

The ORDS 19.2 release notes say the following:

Support for generating PDF responses for PL/SQL Gateway calls will be removed in ORDS 19.2.0. This will impact the features in Oracle Application Express relating to generating PDF documents. Future versions of Oracle Application Express will move to a new mechanism to generate PDF resources.

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/rest-data-services/downloads/ords-releasenotes-192-5592784.html

However, we have an APEX installation using APEX 5.1.4 together with ORDS 19.2, and PDF printing using ORDS still works.

The APEX 19.2 release notes say the following:

7.1.3 Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS)-based Printing Desupported

Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS)-based Printing is desupported as of this release.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/application-express/19.2/htmrn/index.html#HTMRN-GUID-A7400F11-3C2B-4391-901A-…

Does this mean that for example ORDS 19.4 can still be used for PDF printing with APEX 19.1? And what about APEX 19.2 with a pre-19.2 version of ORDS? Does that still support ORDS-based PDF printing?

Thanks

Matthias

Comments

Smuckers

"...and PDF printing using ORDS still works"

In part it depends on exactly what you mean by 'PDF Printing'.  The release notes are referring specifically to Apache FOP PDF Support.  If you create a Report Layout in Apex with an XSL-FO file, it is (or was) possible to use built-in Apache FOP support in ORDS to apply that layout to the PDF document that gets generated. The XSL-FO layout can do things like setting margins, adding headers/footers, changing fonts, etc.  This capability is what is disappearing from ORDS.

If you are creating PDF files from Apex without the use of the Apache FOP functionality, then this release note has no impact to you. I create lots of PDF files from Apex using various methods -- normally via the pdf package created by Anton Scheffer.  I've looked into using XSL-FO and Apache FOP because I'd *like* to add some formatting, but never taken the time to get into the nuts & bolts of actually doing so. I'm looking forward to seeing what they replace the capability with because I've always felt that the current method was simply too much work (and too skimpily documented).  Judging by the scarcity of articles/blogs/etc. online of people using Apex Report Layouts, I think I'm not alone in my opinion.

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Added on Jan 2 2020
#apex-discussions, #pdf
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