We generate dynamic reports in all of our business web applications written for .Net and J2EE. On the server side we use ActiveReports.Net and JasperReports to generate the reports. We then export them to PDF to send down to the browser.
Our clients all use Adobe Reader. We have endless problems with the different versions of Adobe Reader and how they are setup on the client.
What file format/readers are others using for their dynamic reports? We need something that allows for precise layout as many of the reports are forms that are printed with data from out systems. HTML is not expressive enough.
I've used SQL Reporting Services for this purpose. You can design a report template in Visual Studio or generate the XML for the report on the fly in code. You can then have SSRS export the report to about 10 different formats and send to the client including pdf, excel, html, etc. You can also write your own plugin to export to your own format.
Crystal Reports has a similar product thats more expensive but has a better report designer.
I've always had the most success using PDFs to accomplish this. I can't think of a more universally acceptable format that does what you are trying to do. Rather than looking for another format, perhaps it would be better to try to understand how to overcome the problems that you are experiencing with Acrobat on the client side. Can you provide some more information on the types of problems that you are experiencing with Acrobat?
I does know only 3(4) possible viewer(formats) for reporting in browser.
PDF
Flash
Java
(Silverlihgt)
For all 3 there are reporting solutions. Silverlight are to new and I does not know a solution. You can test how flash and Java in your intranet work and then search a reporting solution. I think PDF should be made the few problems if you use the newest readers. The old readers has many bad bugs.
Related
My company uses pdflib to generate pdf and now they are thinking of moving to indesign.
I am doing some initial evaluation, this is our normal process:
designer designs the layout of a pdf.
developers put real texts in. Text lengths can vary, so developers will call some function to determine how much spaces it need and if it is over a page, developer will create a new page with some pdflib api.
Can I do the same thing with indesign server?
You can certainly do what you're doing in pdflib and then some with InDesign Server ("IDS"). IDS has minimal "server" features and is mainly a headless version of desktop Adobe InDesign. There are basically two parts to making a PDF from InDesign Server:
Call the server and tell it to make the PDF (this is typically a
SOAP message that tells IDS what script to run and what data source,
possibly passing data and/or job parameters with the SOAP message).
Run a script with ExtendScript (while there are other languages you can automate IDS with, this is far and away the most common).
You can find the scripting documentation for InDesign CS6 and earlier scripts here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/indesign/sdk.html
Download the Adobe CS6 Scripting SDK (and possibly the InDesign CS6 Server SDK, though really the Scripting SDK and the IDS documentation installed with IDS is all you need). The Scripting SDK includes the "InDesign Server Scripting Guide" which includes a "Hello World" example that makes a document and exports it to PDF.
The scripting in InDesign CC is available only through the pre-release program: you need to apply to Adobe to get access if this matters to you. CC is actually extremely similar to the CS6 version--the main difference is in added features. A script that works in CS6 is likely to work in CC.
I´m evaluating in using YII framework for an application. This app has 2 requirements very important. First is Reporting. I have to make a lot of Reports and subreports. The Second is that reports have to be exported to word, pdf and xls.
I understand that PHP is not very friendly with reporting tools. I think the best could be Jasper Reports?. But that tool can help me with that 2 points?
Have you use reporting tools with advance reports in php? could you give me an advice?
Thanks.
I am working on JasperReports for the last few months. Its extremely user friendly. The 2 points which you mentioned are very well covered in Jasper. You can do 'n' number of reports, subreports, adhocs, olaps,charts and many more. Exporting options are great. There are around 11 formats in which you can export the reports. I have not used yii or any other reporting tool. For reporting and advanced reporting options, Jasperreports works brilliant. You may want to check out this link for more information.
I am doing a Yii project at the moment. I have not used a great deal of reporting tools, and have not checked out Jasper yet.
But for excel the best reporting tool I have found has been PHPExcel. I extended the factory and built my own code around it to work with my data.
Also if you want to report into MS Word, it might be easier to write your data to RTF files.
I have found PDF's and Text/Word Documents tend to not be too flash for reporting. Excel seems to be the most useful so far. I use PHPExcel with both openoffice on linux and MS Excel and I write all my own reports.
Cheers
Daz
Jasper Reports is a great tool for reporting but it require Java and the integration with PHP require the Java bridge which may not be accessible specially in shared hosting, a good alternative is PHPJasperXML, which takes Jasper Reports and render them on PHP natively, also it exports to PDF and Excel.
I don't know if it could help but exists https://github.com/cossou/JasperPHP in the Laravel framework, somebody could adapt it for Yii2 and use it with composer.
Anyone know of a good solution for pdf generation (preferably with a visual layout tool) that I can use from ColdFusion instead of the CF Report Builder? It should be able to accept cfquery input.
Basically is there anything better than the crusty Adobe offering out there?
EDIT: With CF 11 and the "pixel-to-pixel" rendering of "most" CSS and HTML (see https://wikidocs.adobe.com/wiki/display/coldfusionen/PDF+Generation+in+ColdFusion+11), I wonder if anyone has attempted to do anything along the lines of 'normal reports', like page numbering, page breaks, etc. - the more traditional 8.5"x11" oriented features. I'm a bit leery of trying to just do a drop-in replacement for CF Report Builder for this reason, knowing that HTML has no concept (in the browser) of discrete pages and page breaks.
obviously you can use cfdocument to what you want, but good luck getting it to look decent. however if you want to go down the route where you generate html using CFML and then have that outputted to a pdf, you can use wkhtmltopdf. If you want a report builder type application, you can use Jaspersoft Studio. BTW ACF's reporting engine is jasper reports under the hood.
Jasper reports is an alternative that Railo folks use, you could give that a try.
I don't think so. The closest thing I am aware of is DreamWeaver. It's been a while but I believe with a Remote Development Service (RDS) password you can build a full dynamic report using the WYSIWYG design view. Add CFDocument tags around it and you have a pdf report. I believe using CFDocument with HTML / CSS is what most developers use in lieu of Report Builder. I could be wrong but I've only seen it used once and judging by the lack of search results, I don't think it was received as well as it was hoped.
Of course you could always use crystal reports and continue using CFReport that way.
If you're using SQL Server you could get away with using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).
I'm planning to generate sharepoint report for iphone/ipad is there any crystal reports type reporting tool available for ios (iphone/ipad) ?
I doubt there are reporting tools for iOS, but I'd consider these options:
Prepare the report on a server and present it in an imageview or web view.
Find a JavaScript reporting library and present the report in a web view. I know you can pass the data to the web view. I think the way to do it is by passing the web view some additional JavaScript to process.
I've developed a framework to make PDF Reports on iOS devices. Actually I'm working on updating it with new features.
If you're interested it is downloadable from this link: https://github.com/htsoft/RSReport
You can find other informations here: http://www.htmedia.it
Roberto
I'm also facing this problem Salman.
Another solution to Noa's one may be to use charts libraries for iOS as CorePlot for example, and pass the charts/graphs to some UIView. You can then easily export it as PNG or PDF.
But in my case, it's not satisfying and I'm looking for real embedded reports solutions...
If you need a powerful reporting engine, you most likely will need to call a server as suggested by noa to do the complex work. Alternatively you can create PDFs by code using iOS libraries and write the report-logic yourself. Another option is to call a web service (like Docmosis) that can generate and deliver documents without having to code the report layout.
I've been asked to investigate the feasibility of adding watermarks to documents when printed through our application. The documents will consist of word, pdf and cad.
The interface of the application is vb6 with a plethora of vc6 dll's.
I can see a couple of possible solutions:
Convert all documents to PDF, add a watermark and then print.
Find a print driver that will add a watermark to all documents prior to printing and install it and reenable it at runtime if it gets disabled for any reason.
3rd Party suites are possibility (we use Volo View Express for viewing CAD files) but since this application is nearing end-of-life we wouldn't want to spend too much on it.
Has anyone had any experience of the above? Any gotcha's that will bog me down?
Tracker Software has a good set of PDF api's that that will allow you to implement the solution you already have in mind. I've used their Image and PDF libraries quite a bit with a lot of success in both VB6 and .NET. Single user licenses are not expensive (depending on how you look at it I guess), and I've found support to be excellent as well.