Generating reports with C#

[Rimantas Žukaitis]

Hi,

we are developing server side report generation application with .NET.
The problem is, that we have to present same data in diferent formats
(HTML, PDF, WORD, EXCEL). This has to be done using templates, wich
are defined by user (with GUI frontend). The main problem is how to
generate Word (or Excel) document with C#? Using COM automation seems
to be very clumsy and resource consuming? Is there any way to generate
Word document without instantiating Word application itself?

CrystalReports engine looks like the alternative to automation, but is
it possible to create Crystal Report dynamically from scratch? Because
the report template is defined in XML file using stand alone GUI.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Rimantas Žukaitis

[Christoph Schittko [MVP]]

If you are exclusive targetting Office 2003 products then you're in luck.
These products have good XML support, you could simple transform your XML to
WordML like Oleg showed in his blog [0]. I don't know of any product that
has managed classes to generate office documents. Have you tried looking on
Google and/or Retail sites like ComponentSource?

HTH,
Christoph Schittko
Software Architect, .NET Mentor
MS MVP XML .NET

[0] http://www.tkachenko.com/blog/archives/000024.html

"Rimantas Zukaitis" <ri***@ifko.ktu.lt> wrote in message
news:87**************************@posting.google.c om...

Hi,

we are developing server side report generation application with .NET.
The problem is, that we have to present same data in diferent formats
(HTML, PDF, WORD, EXCEL). This has to be done using templates, wich
are defined by user (with GUI frontend). The main problem is how to
generate Word (or Excel) document with C#? Using COM automation seems
to be very clumsy and resource consuming? Is there any way to generate
Word document without instantiating Word application itself?

CrystalReports engine looks like the alternative to automation, but is
it possible to create Crystal Report dynamically from scratch? Because
the report template is defined in XML file using stand alone GUI.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Rimantas Zukaitis

[Christoph Schittko [MVP]]

If you are exclusive targetting Office 2003 products then you're in luck.
These products have good XML support, you could simple transform your XML to
WordML like Oleg showed in his blog [0]. I don't know of any product that
has managed classes to generate office documents. Have you tried looking on
Google and/or Retail sites like ComponentSource?

HTH,
Christoph Schittko
Software Architect, .NET Mentor
MS MVP XML .NET

[0] http://www.tkachenko.com/blog/archives/000024.html

"Rimantas Zukaitis" <ri***@ifko.ktu.lt> wrote in message
news:87**************************@posting.google.c om...

Hi,

we are developing server side report generation application with .NET.
The problem is, that we have to present same data in diferent formats
(HTML, PDF, WORD, EXCEL). This has to be done using templates, wich
are defined by user (with GUI frontend). The main problem is how to
generate Word (or Excel) document with C#? Using COM automation seems
to be very clumsy and resource consuming? Is there any way to generate
Word document without instantiating Word application itself?

CrystalReports engine looks like the alternative to automation, but is
it possible to create Crystal Report dynamically from scratch? Because
the report template is defined in XML file using stand alone GUI.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Rimantas Zukaitis

[Darin]

I have done something similar using Active Reports. You can create reports
from scratch at runtime and convert them into pdf, html and excel files.
Take a look at www.datadynamics.com

Good Luck

"Rimantas Zukaitis" <ri***@ifko.ktu.lt> wrote in message
news:87**************************@posting.google.c om...

Hi,

we are developing server side report generation application with .NET.
The problem is, that we have to present same data in diferent formats
(HTML, PDF, WORD, EXCEL). This has to be done using templates, wich
are defined by user (with GUI frontend). The main problem is how to
generate Word (or Excel) document with C#? Using COM automation seems
to be very clumsy and resource consuming? Is there any way to generate
Word document without instantiating Word application itself?

CrystalReports engine looks like the alternative to automation, but is
it possible to create Crystal Report dynamically from scratch? Because
the report template is defined in XML file using stand alone GUI.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Rimantas Zukaitis

[Rimantas Žukaitis]

"Christoph Schittko [MVP]" <ch********************@austin.rr.com> wrote in message news:<eg**************@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl>...

If you are exclusive targetting Office 2003 products then you're in luck.
These products have good XML support, you could simple transform your XML to
WordML like Oleg showed in his blog [0]. I don't know of any product that
has managed classes to generate office documents. Have you tried looking on
Google and/or Retail sites like ComponentSource?

Wehave considered alternative to generate RTF documents from XML,
instead of trying to generate DOC document using automation. Maybe
there is something similar to Apache FOP in Java for C#?

thanks,
Rimantas

[john farrow]

Apache FOP is an implementation of the XSL-FO standard for generating
documents from XML.

A .NET implementation of this standard is Ibex, from
http://www.xmlpdf.com/ibex.html

Regards

John Farrow
"Rimantas Zukaitis" <ri***@ifko.ktu.lt> wrote in message
news:87**************************@posting.google.c om...

"Christoph Schittko [MVP]" <ch********************@austin.rr.com> wrote in

message news:<eg**************@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl>...

If you are exclusive targetting Office 2003 products then you're in luck. These products have good XML support, you could simple transform your XML to WordML like Oleg showed in his blog [0]. I don't know of any product that has managed classes to generate office documents. Have you tried looking on Google and/or Retail sites like ComponentSource?

Wehave considered alternative to generate RTF documents from XML,
instead of trying to generate DOC document using automation. Maybe
there is something similar to Apache FOP in Java for C#?

thanks,
Rimantas

[Oleg Tkachenko]

john farrow wrote:

Apache FOP is an implementation of the XSL-FO standard for generating
documents from XML.

A .NET implementation of this standard is Ibex, from
http://www.xmlpdf.com/ibex.html

It's worth also to take a look at AntennaHouse XSL Formatter. It's COM based,
but it's just the best one.
--
Oleg Tkachenko
http://www.tkachenko.com/blog
Multiconn Technologies, Israel