Reporting question...

[AMeador]

I have, at one point in time, been a pretty good programmer, but
that was years ago. I can pass programming classes with and A with no
problem, but writting a business class application is a bit of a
struggle. I am relitively new to .NET and C#, but do have pretty strong
background in computers and general programming concepts.
Now to my question. I have to create an app that will pull data from
a database and create a report. This report will have many rows and
five columns. The columns are for four quarters and afifth column is
for a YTD total. You would think that the YTD would be the sum of the
other four columns, but it it not. On a per row basis, the five columns
will be calculated the same way - they will run a query for the data it
is looking for with a start date and an end date to match the time
frame of the column. So, Q1 will be from July 1 to Sept 30; Q2 will be
from Oct 1 to Dec 31; and so on. The YTD will be calculated with the
same equation, but the start date will be July 1 and the end date will
be June 30. These totals will be counting unique people over the given
time frame. So, due to the fact that the YTD column will also be for
unique people over the whole year, it may have a different count than
adding the four quarters totals. Each row will have a different set of
data it is counting, but almost all of them will be doing tallies this
way. There are a few sections that will require a different number of
colums and different calcualtions.
The main question is what should I use to create this report? Is
this more complex than can be done with the Crystal Reports engine
included in VS2003? Can the full version of Crystal Reports do this?
Should I try to use something like Excel? I'm just not sure what method
to use to try to get this report made. We have a short term goal of
giving this report to a "parent" organization that currently receives
this in Excel format, but the longer term goal is to give them an
application that can pull the data from out SQL servers and give them
the report in realtime. The Crystal Reports engine can export the
report in Excel format if I understand it correctly.
Trying to print manually from Windows and .NET seem like a major
pain. From my very limited knowledge of Crystal Reports, I just don't
know if it can do a report like this or not. I'm not sure about using
Excel directly. I have never written an application that would
integrate with an outside app like Excel to create anything, so I don't
know if this is too hard or if maybe this is a good option. I am also
trying to keep this a "professional" app, so I am kindof resistant to
doing something that would require the use of Excel to generate a
report. This just feels hokey. Because of this I lean towards the
Crystal Reports engine, but if it can't do this, then I have to do
something else.
As much advice as possible would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance!

[Zanna]

"AMeador" <am******@tampabay.rr.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:11**********************@o13g2000cwo.googlegr oups.com...

The main question is what should I use to create this report? Trying to print manually from Windows and .NET seem like a major
pain. From my very limited knowledge of Crystal Reports, I just don't
know if it can do a report like this or not.

I don't think that this could be of some utility to you, but for all the
people that don't need something special in theirs reports and want a report
designer/engine really simple to use (and not with dozen of undeciphrable
options) I'd like to suggest my solution at www.neodatatype.net :)

--
Reporting tool: http://www.neodatatype.net

[Jeff Louie]

I agree, so I wrote a framework with printable controls. Basically, it
lets you build WinForms with drag and drop controls that just print
themselves. Just drag, drop and print. I am suprised that there is not a
lot of interest in this approach in C#.

Regards,
Jeff
Trying to print manually from Windows and .NET seem like a major pain.

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[AMeador]

I will keep an eye on this, but I really need to go with a more
tried and true method right now. This project is the first project that
we are doing for a state agency that kind-of has an almost oversite
type position over our organization - so I really need this to work
well. I think my CIO would laugh at me at this point if I suggested
useing a small, 3rd party, beta version of something to generate
reports. But, I have not gotten very far on this at this point and like
you said, it seems like the Crystal Reports engine is a little monster.
Its very confusing to me at this point. I hope your product continues
and manages to stay simple - maybe we will look at it on future
projects.
As far as my question above goes, can Crystal Reports engine (or
full version) do the kind of report I described?
Thanks for the input.

[AMeador]

How would this work to print the report? You would just use these
contols for each place where a data field would be and then manually
print the whole form? It seems like Crystal Reports engine wants a
header, footer, and a single record structure to be repeated over and
over in the body. One, can Crystal Reports engine do the field by field
method of a report? Two, using your method, how hard would it be to
print the whole report and to export the report to Excel?

[Jeff Louie]

A. Meador.... I am used to writing database applications where the input
form
is the report and represents the raw data to be stored in the database
and
represents the search grid for filtering the record set. I have never
used
crystal reports, but suspect it is more designed for creating summaries
on
stored data.

If I wanted to create a summary page, I imagine that I would add a
calculate
button on the form that populates the printable labels based on user
selected criteria and then the user would review the report and then
print the
page. Only the printable labels would appear on the printed page, no
buttons
or standard labels. There is no support for exporting to Excel, but
there is
support for header body footer and page breaks in my little framework
which
basically is a "What You See Is Almost What You Get" approach to
database
forms and printing.

Regards,
Jeff

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[Zanna]

"AMeador" <am******@tampabay.rr.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:11**********************@o13g2000cwo.googlegr oups.com...

I think my CIO would laugh at me at this point if I suggested
useing a small, 3rd party, beta version of something to generate
reports.

That's right.
I also won't suggest it to you for "critical" applictions.

Also if I must add that in my opinion the Crystal Report is a
beta-monkey-coded report tool ;)

--
Reporting tool: http://www.neodatatype.net

[AMeador]

I won't completely disagree with you there - I have seen some pretty
crappy stuff come out of apps using Crystal Reports before, I just
don't know it well enough to know if it was the coder implementing it
wrong, or if Crystal Reports was the culprit, or both!