Oracle Reports RWConverter Crash During REX to RDF Conversion 

While working on an Oracle Reports migration task, I encountered an issue where rwconverter consistently failed while converting a report from REX to RDF format.

The error was not very descriptive. The converter crashed and generated a stack trace referencing Oracle Reports runtime libraries (librw.so) and PL/SQL parsing functions. At first glance, it appeared to be a report corruption issue or an Oracle Reports bug.

Fortunately, the fix turned out to be quite simple.

The Problem

The report conversion was being executed using:

rwconverter.sh \
userid=user/password@DB \
stype=rex \
source=myreport.rex \
dtype=rdf \
dest=myreport.rdf

Instead of completing successfully, rwconverter terminated unexpectedly and displayed a stack trace containing references to Oracle Reports internal libraries and PL/SQL processing routines.

Because the failure occurred during report parsing, initial troubleshooting focused on:

  • Invalid report objects

  • Corrupted report definitions

  • Invalid database packages

  • Oracle Reports patches

  • Environment configuration issues

None of these investigations revealed the root cause.

The Solution

Before executing rwconverter, set the following environment variable:

export DE_DISABLE_PLS_512=0

Then rerun the conversion:

export DE_DISABLE_PLS_512=0

rwconverter.sh \
userid=user/password@DB \
stype=rex \
source=myreport.rex \
dtype=rdf \
dest=myreport.rdf

After setting this variable, the conversion completed successfully and the RDF file was generated without errors.

What Does DE_DISABLE_PLS_512 Mean?

DE_DISABLE_PLS_512 is an Oracle Developer/Reports environment variable related to the PL/SQL engine used by Oracle Developer tools.

The variable influences how Oracle Reports handles PL/SQL processing internally. During report compilation, conversion, and validation, Oracle Reports parses embedded PL/SQL contained in:

  • Formula columns

  • Report triggers

  • Program units

  • Lexical parameters

  • PL/SQL libraries

In certain environments, PL/SQL processing can cause unexpected failures during report conversion. Setting:

export DE_DISABLE_PLS_512=0

ensures that the appropriate PL/SQL handling mechanism is enabled during execution, which can prevent crashes encountered while converting reports.

Although Oracle has not widely documented every internal behavior associated with this variable, it has been known within Oracle Reports troubleshooting scenarios to resolve issues related to PL/SQL parsing and report compilation.

When Should You Try This?

Consider testing this setting if:

  • rwconverter crashes during execution

  • You are converting reports from REX to RDF

  • Stack traces reference librw.so

  • The failure appears related to PL/SQL parsing

  • Database objects are valid but the converter still fails

  • Manual report recompilation is being performed as part of troubleshooting







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