I am preparing an offer for a customer. They proide weekly data to different organizations. There is huge amount data suits OLAP that needed to be visualized with charts and pivot tables on web and custom reports will be built by non-it persons (an easy gui). They will enter a date range, location which data columns to be included and generate report and optionally export the data to Excel. They currently prepare reports with MS Excel with Pivot Tables and but they need a better online tool now to show data to their customers. Tables are huge and need of drill-down functionality. My current knowledge Spring, Flex, MySql, Linux. I have some knowledge of PostgreSQL and MSSQL and Windows. What is the easiest way of doing this project. Do you think that SSRP (haven't tried yet) and ASP.NET better suits for this kind of job. Actually I prefer open source solutions. Flex have OLAP Data Grid control which do aggregation on client side. JasperServer seems promising but it seems I need enterprise version (multiple organizations and ad hoc queries). What about Modrian + Flex + PostgreSQL solution? Any previous experience will be appreciated. Yes I am confused with options.
Take a look at DynamicJasper, it's based on JasperReports, but dynamically!
They have a web demo running here, the demo shows how to customize the report results. But as your users wont be IT people, then you will need less options.
DJ Charting API does not appear in the demo, but you can check it here
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For our SaaS (LAMP) product reporting we are currently using JasperReports. We find it too cumbersome to develop reports with and the output in Word unworkable. Moreover, a couple of customers request to be able to develop simple reports themselves (to be used as mail merge). We would therefore like to develop templates right in Word. The idea is to have an application/webservice that would receive the Word template and JSON data from the LAMP application and return the filled-in report. The report has to support:
Loops inside content (repeating a document section several times while filling in array data)
Filling in tables (populating rows from array)
Filling in chart data in pre-created charts (from array)
This is the functionality we are using in JasperReports right now. Are there existing solutions to this? I've found quite a lot that can substitute simple variables, but no info about the the above three points. Will it be a lot of effort to write one from scratch? I would prefer a Windows OpenXML-based solution rather than a Linux PHPOffice-based one as I presume the former would handle the text split by spell-checker and language tags (though I'm not sure).
Windward and Docmosis are both commercial products that support the features you've listed and they are intended to be added to your application to provide reporting capabilities. Neither is are not OpenXML based. They can use Word documents as templates and perform the data merge into different output formats. Please note I work for Docmosis.
Aspose Words is another tool and it can populate a template but most of the power is through code rather than controls/directives in the template. Given your OpenXML thoughts, perhaps this is more what you are looking for.
More tools are recommended here in StackExchange.
I hope that helps.
ReportBox is a Web based reporting solution that can be used by any software application to generate documents and reports in Microsoft Word/ Excel/ PowerPoint/ HTML(DocX/Xlsx/PPTx/HTML) using OpenXML.
The process starts by building a Microsoft Word/ Excel/ PowerPoint/ HTML document as a template and uploading to ReportBox portal. Your application either sends data to ReportBox or ReportBox can pull data from your application database, which is then merged with the template to produce the finished report. Please note that I work for GreenThoughts.
I am a bit new to iOS Development and I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction regarding an application I am working on.
I am currently working on an application that will be displaying product lists and categories. The list is updated on a weekly basis (one every week).
I am now trying to decide two things:
1- What's the best method of storing this data, I am looking for a way that will allow me to replace the data in the application once every week.
2- Is it going to be beneficial to use CoreData? Note that I Only have Product Category, Product and Product Information entities.
Appreciate your support.
I would use Core Data. Because I know Core Data and am used to work with it. But this is clearly very much like using a chainsaw to cut a slice of bread.
As I understand, you're not familiar with Core Data. Maybe it's not the right tool for the job considering the learning curve.
In your case I would simply use JSON files as provided by the server.
That said, if your looking in Core Data anyway, any store will do, either atomic, XML or SQLite. The first two will load the whole data set in memory and queries will be done in memory as well. SQLite provides the benefits usually associated with databases, with a slightly increased complexity. A chainsaw.
I would use Core Data. If you haven't worked with Core Data before, learn it. It's a great framework.
I am looking for a reporting platform for our asp.net application, which will allow the report to be exported in excel (for tabular data), or PDF/Word (for document reports like Invoice prints).
Are there any standard options available?
I tried Rdlc, but it does not seem to help in the second case (at least I dint see a way, if you can please enlighten me :) ).
Currently we are using Interop for excel export (I know its not recommended for asp.net, we are planning to switch soon), use rtf templates for word reports (which also makes them somewhat customizable) and we dont have pdf export (planning to build it). But it seems like a waste of effort if standard controls are already available!
Cheaper the better! Free rocks!!
What's the issue with Rdlc? You can create any kind of format into it. For invoice prints etc you can use list data region. Its used for free flow kind of stuff. Its like ASP.NET repeater. In your case, you will have only one row of data.
Edit: even Crystal reports has equivalent functionality. As said, you will have only one row of data for invoices etc.
In both Crystal & RDLC, you can even supply multiple rows of data to your free flow report and generate multiple invoices in one go. Can be very helpful feature for users.
What good components and packages are available for generating HTML reports based on report definitions? I have a truly horrific project where each report is a dedicated aspx page that builds one fantastically big HTML string, which it then assigns to a 'reportBody' Label control.
Standard grids are not a good solution as they provide no grouping capability, but I'm open to buying a grid that is friendly for grouping, printing, and exporting. FYI is one reporting engine option I'll be looking at. What else is there? SSRS may not be an option, as MSSQL may not even be an option.
BTW, this is an ASP.NET web site.
You can try ActiveReports.net
You can use i-net Clear Reports (used to be i-net Crystal-Clear). It has many different output formats like HTML, PDF, Postscript, etc. It can print and of course it supports grouping. It is platform-independent. You can it also use together with your ASP.NET. It support many different database like MS SQL, Oracle, MySQL, etc. But also other data sources are possible. The free and fully functional report designer is very easy to use.
Also, the pricing is far below other reporting tools such as Crystal Reports.
you can still use RDLC reports, and just build them in local mode (no SQL SERVER required). I routinely feed my RDLC reports data from the results of function calls rather than have them intimately tied to the database.
The DevExpress ASPxGridView has proven to be an excellent tool for this job.
Standard grids are not a good solution
as they provide no grouping capability
If you want to create your own, I can give you some advice. First, you could probably create the groups with ROLLUP or COMPUTE statements or similar in your SQL and use a grid.
I went the following route: reports are data-driven, so that I know which columns can be grouped and which ones need totals computed. I use a standard DataGrid, and in the ItemDataBound event, I keep a running total for any columns that require it, and then detect changes in the group column. When detected, I insert a group total, reset the running totals and insert out a new group header.
I did a quick prototype of this in a day. But by the time you work out all the little details to give the reports all the features they need, and make them look just right, you'll spend quite a bit of time and end up with a small mountain of code.
I’m thinking through some database design concepts and believe that creating sample data simulating real-world volume of my application will help solidify some design decisions.
Does any anyone know of a tool to create sample data? I’m looking for something that’s database and platform neutral if possible (from MySQL to DB/2 and Windows to UNIX) so to test the design across different systems/architectures. I’m visioning some tool that you can:
point to a database table(s) (some configuration of the DSN, etc.)
introspect the fields and based on the field... (point-and-click or add some configuration)
have a means for expressing how to create sample data (MySQL Sample Data Creator is the kind of thing I vision but I think their'd be some more options like commit frequency so to create very large data sets... millions or billions of rows... don't think this tool would scale to the volume of data I want to create)
push a button and go (depending on your parameters, this may take a long time)
Any thoughts? Sure, I could write an app to do this but it seems so generic that I shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel.
DBMonster is fine but I prefer databene benerator as I explained it in this answer to a similar question.
Something like DBMonster?
This page also has a listing of many DB data generators.
I cannot help you with MySQL or DB/2 but, in case anyone gets to this answer with a need for MS SQL Server, I can recommend the Data Generator from Red Gate.
Our test data generator, Datanamic DB Data Generator can do this for you. Works with MySQL. It uses default "generator settings" when loading your tables the first time. You can then "fine-tune" the fields and/or choose other "generators".