BusinessObjects Board

Binary format of the reports

Hi… We have made some reports that our customers (we are a reseller of BO) uses. Our customers is in different countries, and therefore the reports should be in different languages. We have solved some of this, by retrieving most of the text in the headings etc. by a query from a table whitch contain the different languages. The problem is the headings in the selection-pictures, and the report-tabs. We only want to maintain one version of this report, and use some script to translate it…

So I’ve looked at the binary-format of the reports, and it’s pretty easy to patch this file, so that we can change the text. But if we want to change the text into something longer than if was before, it makes the filesize change, and BO thinks the file is corrupted. Now to the question : Does anyone now how I can make BO accept this patched report-file when the filesize has changed ? I guess there is some checksum somewhere that causes the problem…

-Stian


stianrii (BOB member since 2002-09-26)

This is a stab in the dark but! If the only problem you are experiencing with this approach is the file size, then why not add a bunch of spaces to say the main report header. Then when you convert the Norwegian to say Icelandic (assuming the Icelandic translation means the report tabs are longer) simply remove the correct number of spaces from the header.

I’d be suprised if you could change one tab from 8 characters to 10 and change a second from 10 characters to 8 and still have BO able to read the file! Well I just tried that and it corrupts the file - how were you proposing to do this? (I just used notepad)


Nick Daniels :uk: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

NOTEPAD??? You have to use an hexadecimal editor to edit binary files!

That’s right. I have not any BO file here, but check whether the strings are terminated in ASCII 0 (C style). If so, you can eliminate trailing blanks terminating your string with an ASCII 0.


promero (BOB member since 2002-10-08)

The place in the binaryfile that’s used for the captions in the selectionpictures, is like this (hex) :

07 00 { the hex codes for the catption } 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02

-where the first hex-number is the length of the caption (in this case 7 char’s)

The problem is not when I want to enter a smaller text than the original - then I just fill up with 00’s. Then the file-size is the same. But when I have to enter a longer one - I have to make the filesize a litter bigger - and it will not help to add som blanks…

-stian


stianrii (BOB member since 2002-09-26)

Okay sure, but there is nothing stopping you creating a variable called “Report Size Balancer” with a formula of =“XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”

for example - don’t display it anywhere in the report but you can add or remove characters to balance the file size…


Nick Daniels :uk: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

Yeah…that’s worth a try… thanx

-Stian


stianrii (BOB member since 2002-09-26)