XML report generator

Question

Hi,

I'm looking for a free or commercial API compatible with .NET that generates reports in html, pdf, word, excel ... from XML files with charts, predifined models, XSLT adaptation, verbose mode.

Knowing these functionalities, what would you advise ?

Thanks in advance,

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aelassas.free.fr

Answer 1

Hi,

Some time ago searched around for some .NET components that can generate reports preferably as PDFs from XML using XSL-FO. I came across these ones:

• XEP from RenderX (http://www.renderx.com/)
• XF Render Engine ( http://www.ecrion.com/)
• Antenna House Formatter (http://www.antennahouse.com/product.htm)
• XMLmind XSL-FO Converter (http://www.xmlmind.com/)
• IBEX PDF Creator (http://www.xmlpdf.com/)

 

The last one is quite interesting because you do not have to pay any runtime license fees - even if you would deploy it onto the server. Not all your required output can be generated by all of the listed components, maybe you have to live with a certain tradeoff.

Cheers,

Stefan

Answer 2

Thank you Stefan for these links, the one that attracted me is the altova stylevision. It is possible to integrate it in .NET via COM. I'll see the features of each one and do some tests. If someone knows or recommends other solutions, please let me know.

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aelassas.free.fr

Answer 3

Hi, yes the Altova Stylevision looks quite promising. I would be interesed about their licensing model: When you deploy your product, do you have the right to distribute  a copy of the report engine together with your product? Would you have to pay runtime fees? What about server installations? Can you also embedd the designer itself into your product? Is

I did not find any answer of these questions on their product description. Maybe you know them ...

Regards,

Sefan

 

Answer 4

I have to contact the altova support for this. I'll let you know.

I found an intersting API from google: http://code.google.com/intl/fr/apis/chart/

I can process the XML file with an XSLT to generate the XHTML reports.

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aelassas.free.fr

Answer 5

I have to contact the altova support for this. I'll let you know.

Thanks, I am looking forward for your info ;-)

 

I can process the XML file with an XSLT to generate the XHTML reports.

 

Hmm, that's true for XHTML - this way you do not need any report generator to render the report, just an XSL processor and a HTML-Browser. I think you will no be able to directly get a PDF, Word etc. with that approach but maybe this is sufficient in your case ...

Cheers,

Stefan

 

Answer 6

I can use http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ for this.

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aelassas.free.fr

Answer 7

Stephan,

I've used the jQuery library jqPlot.

Sorry, I didn't ask altova.

Kind regards,

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aelassas.free.fr

Answer 8

Hmm, that's true for XHTML - this way you do not need any report generator to render the report, just an XSL processor and a HTML-Browser. I think you will no be able to directly get a PDF, Word etc. with that approach but maybe this is sufficient in your case ...

I have used HiQ PDF API to transform the HTML reports generated through an XSLT into PDF and Images, and so on ...

This is the most cheaper solution I've found. XSLT is free, A lot of Open Source Javascript Charting APIs available, a cheap commercial API for generating PDF, Images, and so on ...

The client is very satified by the application.

Check out my article to see what else we can do with Javascript Charting APIs.

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