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Object type parameters and results for ODA [message #30267]

Mon, 30 April 2007 15:43

Alexander Bieber

Messages: 44
Registered: July 2009

Member

Hi all,

we use the BIRT engine in our application to do reporting. However we've
now come to a point where the report parameters are getting very complex
and we've started to pass object-type parameters to the reports.
Fortunately this works although birt should only support scalar types :-)

However when trying to bind these report parameters to datasource
parameters I don't get around having them converted to some datatype ODA
knows. Are there any plans to have a type for datasource input
parameters like "Any" or "Java_Object"?

Another issue, though not urgent, would be the same type for dataset
results, i.e. a column type of "Any" or "Java_Object"

Best regards
Alex

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Re: Object type parameters and results for ODA [message #30304 is a reply to message #30267]

Tue, 01 May 2007 00:12

Linda Chan

Messages: 845
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Alex,

Although the ODA API does not support any "user-defined" object type as a
parameter value, it supports complex parameters in the form of a structure
or table. They are represented by oda IParameterRowSet, and related query
methods are defined in IAdvancedQuery.

BIRT however as you know, currently only supports scalar parameters, and
thus does not support passing in or retrieving such complex parameter values
when interacting with an ODA driver. If this support were to be available
in BIRT for both input and output parameters, will it cover your use cases?

Re: retrieving any object type in a result set column, can you please
elaborate on your use cases, and how an ODA consumer application, like BIRT,
would ideally consume such an user-defined object?

Linda

"Alexander Bieber" <alex@jfire.org> wrote in message
news:f152vv$75i$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi all,
>
> we use the BIRT engine in our application to do reporting. However we've
> now come to a point where the report parameters are getting very complex
> and we've started to pass object-type parameters to the reports.
> Fortunately this works although birt should only support scalar types :-)
>
> However when trying to bind these report parameters to datasource
> parameters I don't get around having them converted to some datatype ODA
> knows. Are there any plans to have a type for datasource input parameters
> like "Any" or "Java_Object"?
>
> Another issue, though not urgent, would be the same type for dataset
> results, i.e. a column type of "Any" or "Java_Object"
>
> Best regards
> Alex

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Re: Object type parameters and results for ODA [message #30411 is a reply to message #30304]

Thu, 03 May 2007 09:09

Alexander Bieber

Messages: 44
Registered: July 2009

Member

Hi Linda,

Linda Chan wrote:
> Alex,
>
> Although the ODA API does not support any "user-defined" object type as a
> parameter value, it supports complex parameters in the form of a structure
> or table. They are represented by oda IParameterRowSet, and related query
> methods are defined in IAdvancedQuery.
>
> BIRT however as you know, currently only supports scalar parameters, and
> thus does not support passing in or retrieving such complex parameter values
> when interacting with an ODA driver. If this support were to be available
> in BIRT for both input and output parameters, will it cover your use cases?

Unfortunately complex parameters for queries will not cover our usecase.
We have too many parameter types, it would be a lot of work to model
these once more as ParameterRowSets.
I was just wondering if there are any plans to support 'user-defined'
types at least for input-parameters.
I think for a short-term solution I will limit the types of input
parameters to those that can instantiate themselves from a string and
use a special markup to encode this.

> Re: retrieving any object type in a result set column, can you please
> elaborate on your use cases, and how an ODA consumer application, like BIRT,
> would ideally consume such an user-defined object?
>

As I said this is not an urgent matter. However in our application that
integrates BIRT this would be used as entry point for report developers.
In many cases the scalar types we can return in a dataset result are not
sufficient for a reports requirement. In this cases we'd like the report
developer not to be forced to change the underlying datasource. It would
be great if we could return the actual objects related to a result set
row in addition to their scalar properties. This way a report developer
could use this 'row-object' and use it to create custom output columns
(like in a scripted datasource).

Best regards
Alex

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