XML Publisher - A Beginning ....

Basic steps to create BI Reports - 

1) Create the simple oracle report (rdf file) 

2) create concurrent program with executable as oracle report

3) set the output format as XML

4) run the program. output report will generate the xml tags

5) Now create Data Definition with code as concurrent program name in xml publisher admin(R)

6) create the rtf template (in word/excel/pdf)

7) use can xml tags generated in step 3 as data source to validate the output in rtf template

8) create the template with default output format and associate with created data definition and   attach the rtf file.  now run the concurrent program output will be in the specified format.

Better Coding Practice - To Capture log messages

Once the code in production and stuck with some issue.tough to debug.So the best practice to write custom programs is -
1) Create a profile with default value 'N'
2) Put debug statement based on profile value
       IF fnd_profile.value('Custom Profile') = 'Y' THEN
           Interface - FND_FILE.PUT_LINE(FND_FILE.LOG,'Debug Level 1' );  
           Reports -  SRW.MESSAGE(1,'Debug Level 1')     
      END IF;
3) Run interface by setting the profile value 'Y'