Print Page | Close Window

printing

Printed From: IdeaBlade
Category: DevForce
Forum Name: DevForce Classic
Forum Discription: For .NET 2.0
URL: http://www.ideablade.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=395
Printed Date: 12-Jun-2026 at 1:28am


Topic: printing
Posted By: Dominique
Subject: printing
Date Posted: 29-Aug-2007 at 7:07am
Hi,
I am working on creating documents to print from my smartclient application. I have no experience with the printing process and would like to have some advices about what kind of technic to use.
I've been building som reports lastly with the dotnet component (ReportViewer, report defined in rdlc files) but I'm hitting the wall on some basics problems.
I started to investigate crystal reports but the dog is big! Do you have some good pointers about using CR with object as datasources?
What do you people usually use to do printing from dotNet? CR, dotnet reportViewer, PrintDocuments, others?

Thanks for any advices :)
Dominique


Replies:
Posted By: Linguinut
Date Posted: 29-Aug-2007 at 7:42am
Hello Dominique,
 
I have tried a lot of products over time.  Crystal, SQL Server Reporting, ComponentOne, DevExpress, ReportViewer, etc.  We almost exclusively use ComponentOne for reporting.  This past week I am reevaluating our reporting component.  I am taking a very close look at the http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/WinForms/XtraReports/index.xml - DevExpress reporting suite .  The nice thing about this product is that it takes anything that implements the IList interface.  This makes it quite easy to utilize with DevForce.  Also, the rest of the components of the DX suite are supported by DevForce, including their most recent foray into the CAB world.  My current vote is for DevExpress.  I am still evaluating, however, so that may change in the next week or so.
 
Hope that helps,
Bill

Posted By: Dominique
Date Posted: 29-Aug-2007 at 12:05pm
Hello Bill,
Thank you for your contribution. :)
This tool looks fine! In a first evalution round I eliminated the "forms printer" that just render a windows form. It looks like this product offers both things, "form printing", which can be convenient in some scenarios and classical report editing.
We actually went on devExpress website today but we just looked at the ExpressPrinting System, which is a "form printer" as far as I understand, thanks for opening my eyes ;)
Have you tried the reporting suite? Do I understand right that it is possible to manipulate the report programmatically? That would be great :)

Dominique

Posted By: Linguinut
Date Posted: 29-Aug-2007 at 12:19pm
I used the reporting tools from DevExpress a couple of years ago.  It was quite good even then.  At the time, we only used it in a labelling environment.  Now, we are going to migrate all reports to it from the ComponentOne reporting tool.  It is not a direct migration, so I will move the reports over to the new tool as I go.
 
You will find that DevExpress sets up the report as a separate class.  Totally programmable--tons of flexibility.  You will really like it.  I am considering creating a reports project separate from my application.  All of the report classes would reside in there making it a bit easier to release with the app.  With dependecy injection, I may be able to set it up so that the reports are injected into my CAB application automatically.
 
Well, I am just thinking out loud and dreaming a bit.  Sorry.
 
Bill

Posted By: jeffdoolittle
Date Posted: 30-Aug-2007 at 9:55pm

We recently began a move to standardize on DevExpress reports after suffering through Crystal Reports for the last few years.  The main problem with Crystal is that it doesn't know what to do with a pile of Entities.  You have to convert everything to ADO.NET data sets so Crystal knows what to do with it.  DevExpress XtraReports on the other hand uses plain-ole .NET Binding Sources and can report on whatever you throw into the BindingSource. 


Posted By: Dominique
Date Posted: 30-Aug-2007 at 11:11pm
Thank you again for your comments.
I just produced one of my documents using the PrintDocument class. It was not as awful as I thought (despite some work to get the margin, print area right)but it is quit å bit of work to build the "viewer".
I think I will try DevExpress today :-).
Dominique

Edit: Printing in my project is "good enough" now så I will delay this test, but thanks again for the good advices.

-------------
Dominique

Posted By: rclarke
Date Posted: 04-Sep-2007 at 11:09am
I give another vote for DevExpress. I used to be a believer inActive Reports but like others it doesn't pay any attention to the IList interface and it is expensive. The other nice thing about DevExpress is that for less money than Active Reports you also get a complete control suite which works nicely with DevForce.


Print Page | Close Window