Printing Attached Files

[fwatanabe]

I'm reporting off an application that stores file attachments as BLOB fields in an Oracle 9i database. I was just wondering if anyone has come up with a way to print these off or to launch their parent applications from a Crystal report?

For example: I have a cost entry screen, where daily costs are entered. There might be an Excel file attached, or a pdf invoice from a vendor. The user would like me to create a report showing the costs entered on the screen, but then would like the attachments to print off "automagically" somehow.

I was just curious if anyone else has come across this situation and what sort of creative approaches might work here?

 

[h0h0h0]

Does crystal let you build a hyperlink to the application.exe. Each application should have a flag that you can pass into it that tells it to print.
If this is the case then you could go with a similar option.

 

[fwatanabe]

Unfortunately there is no way to determine the file's extension (not that I can tell). So I wouldn't be able to specify which application to launch. (Unless there is some way to inspect the properties of a BLOB...)

Good idea though... I'm really not sure this one can be solved without writing a custom utility.