Cross-platform problem with Financials & Reports 2.5

Hi all -

Can anyone suggest a way forward on this ?

We are trying to customise some standard Oracle Financials reports, specifically poxprpol.rdf (Purchase Order print) & raxinv.rdf (Invoice print) on an OpenVMS system. Financials 10.6 (character-mode). We have the wonderfully named 'interoperability patch' which upgrades the original Reports 2.0 to Reports 2.5, in character mode. However, we don't have the option of a GUI on our VMS system. So we copy to Win3.1, customise there, copy back to VMS & test (n times). Labourious.

Q1: what are the possibilities of a GUI interface on OpenVMS?

Q2: why did Oracle Financials use user-exits in these reports so that they cannot be run under Windows?

I get a GPF when attempting to load the raxinv.rdf under Windows 3.1!
(poxprpol.rdf loaded fine). I notice that the former is almost 1Mb
(poxprpol is .6Mb). Trying a different approach, I load it into the
database (on the server) & then open (from the database) on the client. It loads up ok, but on opening it, I get an error saying a database package (arp_standard) is too big for the platform (maybe this is what causes the GPF as well). Max for Win3.1 is 64K, package is nearly twice that.

Q4. Why should Reports 2.5 be trying to 'open' the package? I would have thought that the package spec would be all it could be interested in?

Q5: Any suggestions as to how to proceed?

I'm considering:

1. cloning the monster package as XXX_STANDARD, with 'null;' stubs in the package body (to make it smaller)
2. editing the .rdf , replacing ARP_STANDARD with XXX_STANDARD.
3. loading this into Reports 2.5 on Win3.1
4. customising the report, copying back to VMS, replacing XXX_STANDARD with ARP & testing via Oracle Financials.

Anyone with any better ideas?

Thanks for listening,

Eric.

| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ERIC  HARTZENBERG | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |     
| Email    : eric_at_erichome.demon.co.uk   Compuserve  : 100073,21 |
| Homepage : www.erichome.demon.co.uk                            |
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