Apex: Workaround for SVG chart hyperlink bug with Firefox 1.5

I have come across a nasty problem using SVG charts in Apex.

In order to create drill-down charts with Oracle Application Express you provide a SQL statement that will return the data to display a SVG chart's series. This SQL statement must be provided using this syntax:

SELECT link, label, value FROM...

For example:

select
'f?p=141:6:'||:app_session||'::::F141_P6_EMPNO:'||empno link,
ename,
sal
from emp

A simple chart might look like this:


When clicking on the link you would want to see a detail page in
the same browser window:

While this works well in Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1.0.7 and Mozilla, what you see in Firefox 1.5 is:


This is due to a bug in Firefox 1.5 ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=300868 )
. Unfortunately does Firefox ignore the target="_top" attribute for the xlink tag:

<a xlink:href="newdoc.html" target="_top">

The suggested workaround is :

xlink:href="javascript:window.top.location.href='newdoc.html'"

Using this fix to implement a workaround for Apex means changing a query like this:

SELECT *
FROM (SELECT   'f?p=&APP_ID.:14:' || :app_session || '::::P14_EMPNO:' || empno || ':' LINK
      , ename label, sal VALUE
   FROM HTMLDB_SAMPLES.EMP
  WHERE sal IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY ename)

to a query like this:

SELECT *
FROM (SELECT   'javascript:window.top.location.href=''f?p=&APP_ID.:14:' || :app_session
        || '::::P14_EMPNO:' || empno || ':''' LINK
      , ename label, sal VALUE
   FROM HTMLDB_SAMPLES.EMP
  WHERE sal IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY ename)

This works fine for all of the above mentioned browsers.

~Dietmar.