Including BLOB images in your PDF Reports

You have data and lots of it. Some of this data includes images. You store them in your Oracle tables as Binary Large Objects (BLOBs.) You build reports using Oracle SQL Developer. Now you want to make those images in your tables available to your reports, and more importantly, to the end users reading said reports. You can do it!

Earlier this year we walked through how to work with BLOBs in Oracle SQL Developer. So you already know how to INSERT, UPDATE and view the BLOBs stored in your tables.

But wait – haven’t used SQL Developer’s reports yet?

You know how to work with SQL Developer reports, right? No? OK, let’s do a quick run down memory lane then:

• How to Build a Bar Chart
• Child reports – click on parent record for on-the-fly children records

BLOBs in the PDF – Make it so!

Alright, so if you have a GRID report that contains a BLOB column, you have the option of including the BLOB contents when you create a PDF export:

Note that you must specify the treatment of the BLOBs in the report design. You won’t be prompted when you launch the Export wizard dialog.

When you open your PDF, there will be a link to the image. Click it.

It will launch the default image viewer on your machine.