Hello community,

Reporting and printing seem to be a priority in developing VWG applications (especially for those porting code from a WinForm  application).  I make use of two open source libraries to answer my clients reporting needs.

For basic reporting I use iTextSharp ( sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/ ) to create PDF reports on the fly.  I then use a VWG gateway which opens the browser pdf viewer addon to view (and print) those reports.  This is an easy solution which satisfies almost all of my reporting needs.  Create the report and let the client print it.  I am assuming that almost anyone interacting with a LOB application will have PDF installed on their workstation.

The other option is to use the FYI Reporting open-source libraries which handles RDL reports (outside of a SQL Server installation).

FYI Reporting was started by Kim Sheffield who has vast experience with companies including Novell and SilverStream.  Kim was one of the inventors of the DataWindow which he parlayed into PowerBuilder (which was eventually acquired by Sybase).  My point is that his RDL project is viable.  Some points about the RDL project:

The fyiReporting RDL Project is a powerful report and charting system based on Report Definition Language (RDL).  Tabular, free form, matrix, charts are fully supported.  Report output may be displayed as HTML, PDF, Excel, RTF, XML, .Net Control, Web Archive, and to a printer. The fyiReporting Software RDL Project 4 is released under the terms of the Apache License Version 2.  This license allows you to use the RDL Project 4 libraries and programs in either open source or commercial applications as long as you credit fyiReporting Software, LLC.   

Libraries exist for use in your ASP.NET, Windows .Net, and command line applications.  

If you don't use SQL Server as a backend, these libraries allow you to use RDL specifications for report creation and printing.

You can see the RDL project at www.fyireporting.com.

I hope this information might be of help for someone not wanting or able to invest in products such as Crystal Reports, there are open source alternatives out there, and like Gizmox, are of the highest quality.

Regards, Kenn

Hi Palli,

I have used (to a limited degree) the FYI libraries in previous WinfForms applications, it is a serious project and a good candidate for an open-source Report Viewer replacement.  I have not tried (as yet) wrapping any of its ASP.Net controls, I think you might only need to wrap the Viewer control, the designer is probably not well suited as a web application.

It is not advertised as a replacement for MS Report Viewer, but works with the RDL specifications, as such it should be able to render all reports that conform to the RDL spec (sometimes MS doesn't conform to their own specs).

Regards, Kenn

Kenn,

I have striking interest in your approach to generate PDF files using iTextSharp with VWG gateway.  What I like about iTextSharp is that you can pass values to a PDF form to have the form auto-fill the fields.  Can you post a sample code snipplet of your usage of iTextSharp and VWG gateway? 

Thanks.
Trung