PDF Report generation [closed]

Answer 1

For the HTML→PDF step, I really love Prince. It looks like you can call it from VB.

Answer 2

Depending on which platform you are using and targeting, you might want to consider a reporting solution. These are not perfect but the one thing they do give you is the ability to write a report once and then render it in HTML, PDF, or even Excel.

Usually they also provide an editor that helps you design the report and make it look just right. They provide things like paging, headers, footers, graphs, etc. They also provide an API that you can use to programatically create and run the reports.

I've used Reporting Services in a MS environment and Jasper Reports in a Java environment with good results in both. I'm sure there are other options but these are the ones I've been able to use successfully.

Answer 3

Decided on using an approach similar to the one used at http://alistapart.com/articles/boom

Using ABCPdf instead of Prince for the eventual HTML -> PDF generation.

Anyone who is interested in the same thing, feel free to message me about this approach.

Answer 4

My recommendation is to use SQL Reporting Services.

• Can design every page & table of your report
• Include Header and Footer
• Include Page Numbers
• Table of Contents
• Can span through multiple pages
• Supports Images & Charts
• Can be rendered to PDF without a need for any thrid party PDF Converters

Answer 5

I think that if you have a full version of Adobe Acrobat Pro, it comes with Adobe Live Cycle. You should be able to produce reports generated from a database from it. It will give you everything you need in formatting since you will create the report from scratch.

You can create a database connection to an OLE database that will feed data to your form fields. You select the tables to be used, any stored procedures that will run, any queries, and then the data will appear on one of the pallettes in the designer.

You can also use Web Services (WDSL) to receive and process commands and return the results to the form.

Either way, you would bind fields to your data source and then the data would be displayed in your form.

If you're willing to do a little .NET work there's this:

http://www.dotnetvj.com/2009/05/populating-pdf-from-aspnet-using.html