Conditional Statements in BI Publisher: Choose, When, Otherwise vs. If
Oracle BI Publisher offers powerful extended functions to build flexible and dynamic report layouts in RTF templates. Among these, the choose, when, and otherwise elements provide a clean and readable way to handle multiple conditional branches, supplementing or replacing the more traditional if statement.
What Are Choose, When, and Otherwise?
chooseacts like a switch or case block in programming languages.Within
choose, multiplewhenclauses evaluate different conditions.The
otherwiseclause handles any case not matched bywhenconditions.
Syntax Example
<?choose:?>
<?when:FIELD='Value1'?>Result for Value1<?end when?>
<?when:FIELD='Value2'?>Result for Value2<?end when?>
<?otherwise:?>Default Result<?end otherwise?>
<?end choose?>
This renders Result for Value1 if
FIELDequals ‘Value1’, etc., or the default result otherwise.How Does This Compare to
if?The
ifstatement is simpler but limited:
<?if:SUCESS_FLAG='N'?>Unsucessful<?end if?>
But it gets better…
When you utilise an if-then-else statement:
<?xdofx:if AMOUNT > 10 then 'Greater than 10'
else
if AMOUNT < 10 then 'Lower than 10'
else
'Equal to 10'
end if?>
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