APEX

I really wanted to call this "Stupid Questions 101", but figured this was probably a better thread title.

I think this is going to rather long, as I have many variables and other considerations, so let me start off trying to explain.

I finally have my application pretty much finished (at least the initial version, have to see what users say). Now, I also need to add the capability for a nicely formatted report that's rather complicated, preferably as a PDF file. The final result needs to look like pages from a book (different fonts, lots of whitespace, left, right and center alignement, etc.) instead of a standard report layout.

So first, I have about 30 tables (views actually). For this application, I need to produce a report that goes through all of the views and 'dumps' all of the information in each table for whatever 'parent' record the user wants. There's going to be lots of looping, and I have the typical parent - child - grandchild relationships, so when I'm printing the child record, before progressing to the next child record, I also need to print all of the assosciated grandchild records.

A couple views can be simply output in one line, like the simple report format. Most views though need to formatted across multiple lines, like a form. Many fields will also need to be wrapped across multiple lines, adding to the whitespace and indenting problem.

All together, I have around 300 fields or so that I need output, so as I understand it, ApEx itself can't handle this as a web page (besides all the various looping problems, but also the 100 'item' limit), so I'm thinking that I'll need to create a page with a PL/SQL region and write a package (with all of the views getting their own procedure), that will go through all of the looping etc. I'll need for the 'dump'.

So, I'm wondering which is the best approach to take on this, I don't think I can use a PSP page to accomplish this, so I think I just need to use the web toolkit.

1. Should I start my PL/SQL region off with the "pre" tag, so my 'layout' stays intact?
2. I'll also need to print my field 'labels' in bold, so will the "pre" tag interfere with that?
3. Will it be easier to place the htp.p statements in my package's procedures, or just write the package with the htp.p statements and add those with the PL/SQL region on the page? (But then I'll need to use dbms.output to send the data to the region won't I?)
4. Since this will wind up (hopefully) as a nicely formatted region on the page (with lots of whitespace, etc.), will the FOP package allow me to create it (just the region, not the entire page) as a PDF, or does the FOP package only work with standard ApEx 'reports'?
5. Am I way off base here, or is there a better aproach I'm missing? I really need to try and keep everything free (otherwise I'd consider PL/PDF), as being in the government, money is usually pretty tight, we usually only have money just for our salaries and office space.

Like I said above, pretty stupid questions, but I haven't used the web toolkit in about 7 years or so, being tied up with merging two database and cleaning up the data from one of them (it had no data validation or integrity constraints at all, everything was a free-form field, like a giant spreadsheet).

Thanks for any suggestions on how to best tackle this next stage of my problem.

Of to start experimenting some.

Bill Ferguson