Producing Reports With XML and PDF

If you are using CrystalReports for your report generation, I'd suggest checking out using XML and PDF instead. The way I architected my latest app was an n-tier approach that uses a Dal that returns datasets to a Lob layer that converts them to custom collections that are serializable. One of the cool advantages was when it came to writing reports. Since both the DataSets and the Custom Collections are interchangeable with XML, the majority of the data acquisition piece was already done. All I need to do was transform it into something that could print easily, and maybe something that could be saved (for nightly batch reports).

HTML is cool, but doesn't print well (no support for heards and trailers). XSL-FO would work, but I don't know of any .Net implementations. PDF seemed like the logical choice, and I found a cool library called XMLPDF for .Net. It handles the majority of my needs and is template based. And at a price of $400/ developer, with no server or app fees it is a bargin.

I had someone ask about using the SharpVectors project for something like this, and yes you could wrap the it and produce something like XMLPDF, I really do not see much of an advantage over XMLPDF. The one thing that you could do with it that you can with XMLPDF is have SVG support. But now in Adobe's ImageViewer Plugin for AcrobatReader 5.1, there is support for SVG within PDF, but there are some issues with running within a browser, so it is a work in progress. Seems like we are close to getting PDF and SVG embedded in the same file.

Don XML