Including Charts in PDF documents

One question that is often asked about the new PDF printing feature in Oracle Application Express 3.0 (APEX) is whether it is possible to include charts in the PDF document. And the answer is yes, it's actually quite easy to implement using the BI Publisher template builder plug-in for MS Word (and BI Publisher as the PDF rendering engine for APEX). It's important to understand however, that this is not a "printer-friendly" version of your web page. So if you have e.g. a Flash chart region and a report region on your page, you can't simply print this as PDF. What the PDF printing feature in APEX does is, it generates XML data of your report result-set and using an XSL-FO report layout (or RTF template), the XML data is transformed into PDF (or other supported output formats). Which is then send back to the browser for download.

So in order to create a PDF document that contains e.g. a chart and report, you need to create a report query and associate that report query with an RTF based report layout. Report queries can be found under Shared Components.

I created a simple demo application, which can be found here:

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=pdfchart

In this sample I created a report region on the EMP table and a pie chart using the new APEX 3.0 Flash charts. The chart shows the sums of the salary column for each job title. I then created a report query, using the report query create wizard under Shared Components. I entered the same query that I used for the reports region. I tested the query and proceeded to the page that lets me download the XML data of my report. I downloaded the file and opened it in the BI Publisher template builder plug-in for MS Word.

You can fine more information on the template builder and BI Publisher in general here:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/applications/publishing/index.html

Using the template builder, I created a chart and report definition and saved this as an RTF file, which I then uploaded back into Application Express. The RTF report layout can be downloaded on the report page of my demo application, there's a button called "Download RTF report layout" next to the Print button.

After completing the wizard, I copied the print URL and made this URL the target for my "Print Chart and Report" button. Now when I press this button, I'm getting a PDF document, which is quite similar to my web page, it includes a pie chart and the report. Of course there are differences, but a PDF document is intended for printing, and a web page is intended for being viewed in a browser. So some differences are to be expected.