BI Publisher Template Viewer

BI Publisher Template Viewer

In the times of BIP 11g, online layout editing and frolicking free data modeling, a wee little tool is almost forgotten: The BI Publisher Template Viewer. Never heard of it? Well, read on then...

The template viewer is a handy little tool installed along the BI Publisher Desktop (aka Word Add-In or Template Builder). It's main purpose is to assist in debugging non-RTF templates such as eText or Excel templates but it can be used for any other template type (excluding the new .xpt templates built using the 11g online editor).

If you launch it from the respective Start menu item on your Windows workstation, it presents itself as a simple Java application.



The usage is plain simple, for example:

1. To debug a template you use the Browse... button to specify a working directory. The directory must contain at least one sample XML file and at least one template file. You could give it a first try with the sample folders delivered with the BI Publisher Desktop.

2. In the Data window, select the sample XML file to use.

3. In the Template window, select the template to use.

4. Specify an output format and locale and click the Start Processing button.

Depending on the log level (see below), verbose output is generated and finally the document viewer (such as Adobe Acrobat Reader) is launched to display the generated output document. Of course, errors are displayed in the output window if the template is buggy.

The debug level and report parameters can be set in the Setting (Default) tab:


In the above example, the log level is set to STATEMENT (Maximum Log).




Challa.