Newbie question

Hi All,
My company has a legacy web application (VBScript/ASP) that includes a
series of forms used to create various reports on SQL Server (or Oracle)
data. Creation of these reports is extremely tedious due to fairly
complicated calculations etc. My question for the group is: Is MS
Reporting Services a valid alternative to the way i'm doing things now? I
need to be able to create new interactive custom reports fairly easily and
link to them via the old web application.
Thanks In Advance,
TeddRS integrates pretty easily with custom web apps particularly for intranet
apps. You can use either URL integration or web services integration. URL
integration is the easiest and fullest featured (you have roll you own a lot
more when using web services). SQL Server reporting is very easy. The main
thing with Oracle is getting all the client apps installed and properly
configured (but that is not too untypical of anything concerning Oracle). I
go against Sybase and SQL Server. Others once up and running have been
successfull with Oracle. With RS 2005 (released in November) my expectation
is Oracle will be easier to go against. It also has a good many improvements
(my two favorites are dynamic sorting and multi-select parameters). I would
suggest getting the 90 day trial and give it a try.
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"Tedd Simms" <tedd.simms.SPAMTRAP@.cognostech.com> wrote in message
news:yf-dnbYtb-kzmF7fRVn-gQ@.novus-tele.net...
> Hi All,
> My company has a legacy web application (VBScript/ASP) that includes a
> series of forms used to create various reports on SQL Server (or Oracle)
> data. Creation of these reports is extremely tedious due to fairly
> complicated calculations etc. My question for the group is: Is MS
> Reporting Services a valid alternative to the way i'm doing things now? I
> need to be able to create new interactive custom reports fairly easily and
> link to them via the old web application.
> Thanks In Advance,
> Tedd
>|||"Bruce L-C [MVP]" <bruce_lcNOSPAM@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:etoRWSPfFHA.1948@.TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> RS integrates pretty easily with custom web apps particularly for intranet
> apps. You can use either URL integration or web services integration. URL
> integration is the easiest and fullest featured (you have roll you own a
> lot more when using web services). SQL Server reporting is very easy. The
> main thing with Oracle is getting all the client apps installed and
> properly configured (but that is not too untypical of anything concerning
> Oracle). I go against Sybase and SQL Server. Others once up and running
> have been successfull with Oracle. With RS 2005 (released in November) my
> expectation is Oracle will be easier to go against. It also has a good
> many improvements (my two favorites are dynamic sorting and multi-select
> parameters). I would suggest getting the 90 day trial and give it a try.
Thanks for the response Bruce.
Actually, i'm not too worried about using it with Oracle. I'm trying to
convince my boss to discontinue development and support for it.
>
> --
> Bruce Loehle-Conger
> MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
>
> "Tedd Simms" <tedd.simms.SPAMTRAP@.cognostech.com> wrote in message
> news:yf-dnbYtb-kzmF7fRVn-gQ@.novus-tele.net...
>> Hi All,
>> My company has a legacy web application (VBScript/ASP) that includes a
>> series of forms used to create various reports on SQL Server (or Oracle)
>> data. Creation of these reports is extremely tedious due to fairly
>> complicated calculations etc. My question for the group is: Is MS
>> Reporting Services a valid alternative to the way i'm doing things now?
>> I need to be able to create new interactive custom reports fairly easily
>> and link to them via the old web application.
>> Thanks In Advance,
>> Tedd
>

newbie pl/sql outputs select results

Hi,
I want to write a PL/SQL search engine that does some complex checking of various tables for a client's website. I could write it all in a PHP $sql = "SELECT ..." but I want to put it the sql into PL/SQL and am having trouble figuring out how PL/SQL outputs results.

Basically, I want to call the procedure with some keywords and have it return the results. Something like this:

create package jonsearch is

procedure getrecords(kw IN varchar, results OUT ?) is
begin
--complex sql goes here
end;

end jonsearch;

jonsearch.getrecords("keywords") would return the results just like select * from table would return results.

My trouble is that every tutorial I have read relies on dbms_output.put_line to output data. I want to output the results as a set, with an output variable, but I can't find a tutorial that shows how to use output variables.

Any help, even pointing me to a tutorial, would be great.

thanks,

JonIt turns out what I was looking for is called a REF CURSOR. I needed to create a package that defines this reference cursor, and then use that as my output variable.

This is described here, if anyone is interested:

http://www.oracle-base.com/Articles/8i/UsingRefCursorsToReturnRecordsets.asp|||Not understanding...

How are you wanting to output the variables? If you want to simply return the values, you will use the DBMS_OUTPUT package. If you are returning to Apache through the modplsql module, you will use the HTP and HTF packages.

As to REF Cursors, here is a Reader's Digest version:

http://www.dbforums.com/t974133.html

JoeB