Browser based report designer

[ozejohn]

Hi,


Does anybody currently use any of the browser based report designers? This is an obvious requirement for many (almost all?) apps. My thinking is somebody in the Nettalk web server community must have a working solution to this problem.

There are a lot of free and commerical royalty free web based report designers out there. Has anyone got one of them working with Nettalk Web Server? If not does anyone know if Right Reports might be available to create reports on the web in future?

[Bruce]

Hi John,

I'm sure I can think of a couple web apps where a report designer isn't an absolute requirement. (Google, eBay and Amazon spring to mind <g>).

Regarding Right Reports - I won't rule out online-report-designing, but it'd be quite a big job to re-write the editor for the web. As you know reports designed by reight Reports can already be _run_ on the web.

Cheers
Bruce

[ozejohn]

Hi,

Thanks Bruce. I agree that not all apps need a report designer. But the competition I am coming up against for intranet apps all have online report designers as part of their toolkit.

Not enough Nettalk users may need a report writer to justify building a web front end onto right reports. Perhaps someone in the Nettalk communtiy can point me in the right direction to get a report designer working with Nettalk some other way.

I am wondering what other Nettalk users are doing :-
- using other tools like clarion itself where a report designer is needed,
- using some other report component. That is the one I hope is being used by somebody. If there is a report component being used with nettalk already it would save me working out how to do so,
- just moving way from Clarion for jobs that require a report designer and using other tools instead of clarion/nettalk for intranets etc. where internet and report generation are required. ,
- just not taking on web based work where a report designer is required.

Come on guys. Somebody else must be using a report designer with nettalk web server. If so please suggest what options I have.Thanks for your help.

[kevin plummer]

Hi John,

I use List and Label in Clarion for all my windows reports which has a report designer. I am using this process to dynamically create reports for my web app by drilling in and using code already written.

List and Label have a web report designer which also works for asp.net

I have not tried it yet but this is how I was hoping to integrate this functionality for my users.

You may be able to download a trial version from Combit to play with.

The downside is that you would need to have IIS running on your netweb server

HTH's


Kev

[ozejohn]

Hi,

I used list and label many years ago but have not touched it since. How do you find it?

As to web access to the designer I can think of the following deployment options for the designer
- add a icon on to download a single exe local designer client. This might not be too bad in some cases.,
- Install the List and Label enterprise edition to edit reports. The reason I like Nettalk is it simplifies deployment. Having another thing to deploy is a pain. However this is probably the best option as it makes the whole thing look like one app.

Please post any progress you make with getting this done. I would like to know how you get on.

Thanks for your help.

[kevin plummer]

Hi John,

well the clarion templates were pretty crap so I just hacked the source code template until I got it to do what I wanted in terms of my look and feel.

there was also a pretty steep learning curve to creating reports (only because it has so many options, bit like nettalk) but once I cracked it there has nothing a user has asked for that I can't do - there is usually a setting somewhere and the end reports look really nice.

however, very few users modify or design their own reports so it is not a crucial feature for me to add in at the moment.

I'll let you know once I start to play with the dot net designer - clarion asp.net may be ready by then and another LL user may have it all hooked in!

Kev