Extracting PDF from Blob data type

[Former Member]

Gurus,

My client wants to extract PDF files saved in BLOB data type - Oracle 11g. These PDFs are invoices - with one page per value.

We intend to use SAP BODS 4.1.  Could you guys please suggest a way to do it?  Once this is achieved, a report has will be generated - using BI client tools.

Extraction is necessary since reporting tools in BI doesn't support BLOB data type (Webi doesn't , Crystal Reports does but only if their is an image).

Look forward to the solutions.

Thank you  

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello

Data Services can help you with this.  It can manipulate BLOB data and since 4.1 SP1 it has the capability to extract the content from PDF documents.  Here's a excerpt from the DS 4.1 SP1 What's New - http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/sboDS41/en/sbo411_ds_whats_new_en.pdf

Processing of binary source documents

The Text Data Processing Entity Extraction transform now supports the processing of a number of

binary source formats:

• Microsoft Word: 2003, 2007, and 2010 (Office Open XML)

• Microsoft PowerPoint: 2003, 2007, and 2010

• Microsoft Excel: 2003, 2007, and 2010

• Adobe PDF: 1.3 – 1.7

• Microsoft RTF: 1.8 and 1.9.1

• Microsoft Outlook E-mail Message: 2003, 2007, 2010

• Generic E-mail Message: “.eml” files

• Open Document Text, Spreadsheet, and Presentation: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2

• Corel WordPerfect: 6.0 (1993) – X5 (2010)

Michael

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Michael, it's really very useful.  Wanted to understand a little more about it. 

For us, the data is in Oracle 11g database (prod) and we need to extract the PDF sitting in the BLOB and physically save it in the disk. 

Any specific steps we can follow?

Thanks

Rishab

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

SAP doc is misleading as they say everything available but with conditions

I have seen couple of blogs in google where people have used java code to migrate blob data from Oracle DB.

Have you tried long_to_xml function in DS? If that works convert the output to xml first and then do the remaining transformations.

[mageshwaran_subramanian]

Hi Rishab - Are you able to achieve the blob extraction?

[Former Member]

Hi,

To my knowledge DS does not have the capabilities to extract BLOB data from a database. This is my understanding and is curious to know if otherwise.

Arun

[Former Member]

Thanks Arun.

Any other tool you may suggest if DS won't be of help?

Rishab

[Former Member]

Support working with BLOB and CLOB datatypes in DS : View Idea