Report Generator Recommendations

[AK]

Hello,

I have a VB6 DB Application which I distribute to customers that do not have
Access on their machines.

They are asking me for the ability to print reports of the data that our
software shows them on the screen in various datagrids


What would the group recommend?

I need to be able to redistribute the reporting capability with my VB
application and it must be able to run without the user having MS Access on
their machine, and I would like an easy to use interface for my creating the
reports.


Crystal? or something else??


Thanks for your recommendations/tips/advice


AK

 

[Klatuu]

Either Crystal or get the developer's toolkit and distribute the Access
Runtime.

 

[Robert]

You can also code reports in VB6. If you are good at coding report logic
then this is a good way to go. You are doing it entirely within VB. You
need a good sample program.

 

[AK]

While I was waiting for my copy of crystal to arrive, I went ahead and
tried a hand at hard coding using a shaped recordset and putting the items
into the group and detail areas on the data rport.


This was a bear, but I went ahead and did it cause I wasn't going to let it
beat me and it was fun learning something new. Got it to work out great.

I did find a good example that helped get me started. BTW, I was
disappointed at the available documentation on the DataReport feature of VB.
I looked for something along the lines of "experts guide to using the MS
DataReport. no such luck. I any know of a good reference please let me know.

Concerning the shaped recordset which is needed for a grouped information
datareport, many books were sparse on info, but one of them O'reilly, Roff,
ADO: Active X Data Objects had a good write up on things.

AK

 

[Robert]

Did you actually use DataReport? Or a from-scratch report? I made a
from-scratch report in VB6 that writes to a picture box on a form for a
print preview. To show different pages you can filter the recordset which
has a page number in each line. There is a button on the form for sending
it to the printer. I did the same thing in VB .NET. The recordset coding
and the printer statements have all changed but the overall design of the
thing is the same.

Glad you got it to work.