[Libreoffice] Oracle Report Builder corrupting chart objects

[Alexander Thurgood]

Le 17/05/11 04:14, Kohei Yoshida a écrit :

Hi Kohei,


> Now, 3.3 also had ORB installed by default, and it didn't cause this
> problem.  When it saves a document with chart, it saves the chart object
> using the opendocument.chart mime type, not the report.chart mime type.
> So I assume that's the correct behavior.

So when did the problem come into existence ? With integration of OOo
m103 code, or some other commit ? Could we not just revert back to the
state of things in 3.3 ?


> 
> Ok. So far I've described why the bug happens. Now the question is how
> do we fix it?  There are several ways to fix this.
> 
> 1. Promote the chart8 filter as the preferred filter for the
> chart2.Document type.  This can be done by the attached
> chart8-is-preferred-for-chart-document.diff patch.  This will ensure
> that during the query for the right filter service type, the chart8
> filter gets picked over the one from ORB.
> 
> 2. Remove the type detection definition for the chart2.Document type
> from the report builder itself.  This can be done by the
> report-builder-dont-act-like-chart-handler.diff patch.  This will
> prevent ORB from advertising itself as the chart filter provider.
> 
> 3. Don't ship with Oracle Report Builder.  I hope I don't need an
> explanation for this.
> 

You don't mention reverting the commit that caused the problem in the
first place, I would feel that that is also worthy of consideration.


> My preferred option is option 3.  Because, while I was test-driving ORB,
> it crashed several times due to null pointer exception from the Java
> code.  And when it does that, it takes the whole soffice process down
> with it.  It doesn't appear to be very stable.  But then, maybe there
> are users out there who appreciates this extension.  I don't really
> know.  It would be nice to know the original motivation behind including
> this extension.  Was there a high demand for this functionality?


My humble opinion is that Base users already feel alienated enough. Take
away the ORB without providing a functionally equivalent replacement and
you will sign the death knell for Base. I often hear on the dev lists,
IRC, etc, questions or comments like "I never use Base, so I don't
really care" or "who the hell uses Base anyway ?".

Well, surprising as it may seem, quite a few people, and not just those
individuals creating a DVD or Wine Collection library, but real
businesses and administrations. How to quantify ? Well Sun asked
themselves the same question many years ago (before the current Base
module and ORB even came into being) and sent out questionnaires, or
invited people to comment on a web page. Funnily enough, that opinion
poll, or "testing of the water" came back with a resounding net positive
in favour of having an office suite that included substantial Base
functionality. This led to the integration of hsqldb, the development of
the mysql connector, the ORB and on the whole better integration of DBMS
functionality into OpenOffice.org. However imperfect these things might
be, they still provide needed and used functions to all of those people
who responded to the poll from Sun. Mailmerge is one key element, the
ORB is another. Remove them, or allow them to die, and ultimately you
kill Base (at least by attrition if nothing else).

The biggest problem with the ORB as far as I know is that because of the
Java dependencies, it has to be rebuilt with every new version build,
else it will either not work or cause even more problems. Having chart
functionality in the ORB was also a longstanding request from the OOo
user community (which includes businesses and administrations), and in
the end Sun came up with the goods.

Please excuse my rather passionate plea in defence of Base in general
and the ORB in particular. I am the first to recognise its failings, but
do not take away what little functionality we still have, at least not
until or unless we have a complete replacement for it.


Alex