Applications Product Support Guidelines Regarding Custom Reports and Programs (Doc ID 357941.1)

Last updated on JANUARY 26, 2024

Applies to:

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to increase awareness regarding the extent of technical support available by Applications Product Support for custom Reports and Programs.

Scope

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Customization Reports And Programs Defined
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1. Modification Of Seeded Oracle Report Programs

In E-Business Suite (EBS) Release 11i and 12, Oracle Applications is seeded with some 6,000+ registered programs. Practically all the seeded reports in Oracle Applications were designed as "Character" mode reports (ASCII Text).

In a new install of Oracle Applications, these character mode reports will run successfully "as is" with the standard seeded drivers available within the system. Character mode reports were NOT designed or optimized to be viewed or printed in bitmap formats like Postscript, PDF, HTML, etc. The scaling of the character mode reports is in inches whereas the scaling of bitmap mode reports is in points.

If you change the output format of a seeded character mode report from "Text" to a bitmap format, such as Postscript or PDF, the report's layout at run time may be adversely affected: text truncation, substitution of fonts type or size, poor text alignment, incorrect page break points and so on.

Character mode reports and bitmap reports utilize different type of drivers. Therefore, a change in the report format will likely required a custom drivers, special environment setup, and/or third party products.

In short, when you changed the output format of an Oracle seeded report, you are customizing the report and its environment. The "Output Format" option provides a means for developers and administrator to customize and extend Oracle Applications; it is not a standard option for changing the format of existing Oracle seeded reports. 

Additionally, alteration of any Oracle seeded program, report, script, driver, or public API is considered a customization. A good example is a printer driver. Custom reports typically will required custom drivers that will accommodate the layout, text, or format of the custom report. Changing an Apps seeded printer driver or file to accommodate a custom report is viewed as a customization.

NOTE 1: Oracle Applications provides a simple beginning set of printer drivers. These generic or plain drivers are working examples intended for the printer make or model stated in the driver's name and description. They may or may not optimally work with other printers. Oracle does not provide additional deliverable examples; therefore, outside of this set, a custom printer driver needs to be defined.

2. Extension Of Oracle Applications

Adding non-Oracle seeded components (reports, scripts, drivers, fonts, templates, etc.) that were not delivered via the initial installation, upgrade process, or patching is also considered a customization.

3. Integration Of Third Party Components

Integration of third party components, such as fonts (MICR, Barcode, etc.), preprocessing software (PDFTOPS, PDF2PS, etc.), specialized printing scripts, filters, or pre-printed form that required precision printing is considered customization.

NOTE 2: Oracle Applications has all kinds of options and hooks that allows integration of other products, however. Integrating third party products is a form of customization that should be handled by Oracle Consulting or a third party consulting group, extensive testing may be required.

4.  Components or programs with database links (a.k.a. DB link)

"EBS Development standards recommend against the use of database link", "core APIs...functions will not work correctly when called in certain ways across DB links", "We strongly discourage the use of database links, due to [security risk] issues..."

Details

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