Unable to visualize the Month name in BI Publisher

 I have been asked to display the dates in a BI Publisher extract in the following format: 

DD-Mon-YY - I.e. 20-Jul-19

I thought it was just a matter of using a TO_CHAR and applying the date mask. To my surprise, I kept on seeing the month being displayed in numeric format. 

The solution was to convert the date to char by adding the NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE parameter.

I.e. to_char(START_DATE,'DD-Mon-YY','nls_date_language=American')

 

 

Result: 

Oracle Tip: Error in BI Publisher Desktop Installation and issue with Microsoft Office 2013

I tried to install Oracle BI Publisher Desktop 11.1.1.7 on my Windows 64 laptop for Microsoft Office 2013 32bits and I got the following error:

"Please make sure JRE version 1.6 or later is installed"

I had Java 1.6 45 32 bit installed and working fine. After struggling in understanding what was wrong, I did the following:

• Uninstall all Java JRE and JDK from your laptop
• Install Java JDK 32 bit
• Install Java JDK 64 bit
• Reboot the laptop 
• Install BI Publisher Desktop

The installation went through with no issues, but when I opened Microsoft Word I could not see the BI Publisher tab. The Add-in was not even in the list of available Add-ins for Word.
Google helped me once more and I found a note saying that you have to look for Program Files (x86)\Oracle\BI Publisher\BI Publisher Desktop\DotNetInstallFiles folder and execute setup.exe (close any Office application before starting the installation). I just followed the instructions and at the end the BI Publisher tab was finally there.

Oracle Tip: BI Publisher Report URL without Login

My current customer wants to integrate BI Publisher reports in its web portal. They want to publish URLs that allow users to view reports, skipping the login page.
We can retrieve the Report URL by selecting any of Share Report Link options.

 Copy the URL and add the parameters id and passwd for logging into BI Publisher.

http://<server>:<port>/xmlpserver/Components/<Report_Name>.xdo?id=<user_id>&passwd=<user_password>&_xpf=&_xpt=0&_xdo=<Path to the Report>.xdo&_xmode=4&_params<parameters_if_any>&_xt=<Layout_Name>&_xf=analyze&_xana=view

The main disadvantage of this method is that user credentials are not encrypted. This is not the safest method on earth, but it works and it made my customer happy.