Best technique for this... COMPLEX- xperts please help!

[Tim Field]

Hi All,

 

I have an application that needs to print forms with data all over the place (it will look like a questionairre) and have grids etc. I can export XML from my application and do some sort of transformation (unknown) and then put this into Microsoft Word, or I can use Active Reports (not sure about these yet) or maybe there's something else I don't know about! Anyone got any ideas as the best way to accomplish this??

 

Appologies if this is a general question, I'll add more details if you ask for them.

 

Thanks, Tim

[sjn78]

Why don't you create your own report. Draw your text, lines, whatever you want to show onto a graphics surface. I can't exactly remember how to do it, but I did it a fair while ago in a project. Do a search in here and you will find how to do it.

 

This way, you have complete control over how it looks and what is displayed. It will take a fair bit of work, but at least you will have it exactly as you want it.

[mskeel]

Since you already have the information in XML, perhaps you could format the questionairre using XSL and render it using a web browser or web browser control.

[Denaes]

I second the "do it yourself".

 

Component One had a free version of their suite like 2 years back with the VB.Net addon pack. It was a commercially free pack which was pretty good and had reporting tools and flexgrids.

 

It's nothing compared to the newest C1 package... that thing is just awesome.

 

But I used the C1 Reporting to create reports. It comes with a report builder which works suprisingly like a less polished version of the MS Access report builder... it was kinda quick 'n dirty.

 

But it did work. Then you could view the code and change things or add things. For the application I had, I had a window that scanned a directory for reports (they were .xml files) and displayed the names and I had about 10-15 reports.

 

Pros: nobody needs to have anything other than .Net. It's how you want it to look. It's pretty easy. Great documentation.

 

Cons: You have to be careful about displaying your text. If you don't have a unicode font 5 characters will take up different space: "iiiii" vs "WWWWW" and it's easy to get lines truncated or running over each other. Using Word would require someone to have word, but would handle some of these problems and (IMO) wouldn't look as professional.

 

Overall, if you're doing this for someone else's utility, I'd say do it as a Report and as a .RTF or .Doc both. It gives someone a chance to manipulate the data. Where I currently work, 99% of the reports are Excel & Report. The report exports to PDF.