Report Engine (Design Question)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Abhi
  • Start date Start date
A

Abhi

I am in process of designing a report generation application.
Now here is breif background about my workplace ......

my system admin is a big microsoft hater .... so does not allow any
microsoft technologies.
God knows how i am able to survive ... but anyway I have to come up with a
report generation application which will generate report on a daily basis.

I haven't started the design yet .... I was thinking of creating a console
..NET app which will run everyday with some command line parameters and
create the reports and export it somehwere on the server.

Now can you guys think of any other approach which might appeal to my system
admin as he is open to XML and web service option. Any insight as to how I
can make this as a XML web service will help me a lot. If I am not wrong I
will be needing IIS inorder to create a XML web service. I will have to
convince my sys admin on that.

Well bottom line .... I need some advice as to what different approaches I
can take inorder to create my report generation application which will be
freindlier to my sys admin too.

Abhi
 
Abhi said:
I am in process of designing a report generation application.
Now here is breif background about my workplace ......

my system admin is a big microsoft hater .... so does not allow any
microsoft technologies.
God knows how i am able to survive ... but anyway I have to come up with a
report generation application which will generate report on a daily basis.

I haven't started the design yet .... I was thinking of creating a console
.NET app which will run everyday with some command line parameters and
create the reports and export it somehwere on the server.

Now can you guys think of any other approach which might appeal to my system
admin as he is open to XML and web service option. Any insight as to how I
can make this as a XML web service will help me a lot. If I am not wrong I
will be needing IIS inorder to create a XML web service. I will have to
convince my sys admin on that.

Well bottom line .... I need some advice as to what different approaches I
can take inorder to create my report generation application which will be
freindlier to my sys admin too.
Click to expand...

Hmm, your question isn't too clear in one respect: Exactly how do you need
to access the report? Do you need to provide a webservice and expose it on
the fly? Eoes it even have to be available via http? Or do you just have to
write to \\somemachine\someshare\somefile?
If you just need to write a file that something else will load, any .NET
executable can generate XML documents with the System.Xml namespace classes.
Furthermore, for console work, you can probably get away with using Mono
(go-mono.com) instead of the MS framework. Your sysadmin may be more open to
that.
 
End result is that the management needs to see the report. I am currently
planning to create the reports and export it as HTML/PDF files and store it
on a share drive.

Abhi
 
Abhi said:
End result is that the management needs to see the report. I am currently
planning to create the reports and export it as HTML/PDF files and store it
on a share drive.
Click to expand...
In that case you probably don't need a webserivce(unless the report data
needs to be accessible from a number of places for other reasons). You
should be able to simply write out xml files with your .NET app. Mono should
support the functionality you need if you need to deploy on a Linux machine,
dump out your xml files, and be done with it. Will that be sufficent?
If not, leave mre information and I'll see if I can think up anything else.
 
Thanks Daniel for your input.
I was thinking of doing something so that in the future I can even built
interface for the PDA's so that it will be accessible from there too.
Currently the management wants some kind of interface where a person will
sit and run the reports everyday. But I wanted to go one step further where
the person doens't need to do anything because the reports are very standard
and can be programmed so that it doesn't need any interface.

I was more inclinde towards a web service because my sys admin seems to be
liking pearl, so I thought may be I can built a web service and then he can
create a pearl.NET cosumer. I dont know if that is possible.

Another thought came to my mind as to make a fat client and install it on
the client computer, but I dont think so that is the right thing.
Web application seems impossible because my sys admin hates IIS, I mean he
simple hates IIS.
Anyway I can convince him or any other alternative for that route, becaue I
think web is the ideal way to go.

Abhi
 
Abhi said:
Thanks Daniel for your input.
I was thinking of doing something so that in the future I can even built
interface for the PDA's so that it will be accessible from there too.
Currently the management wants some kind of interface where a person will
sit and run the reports everyday. But I wanted to go one step further where
the person doens't need to do anything because the reports are very standard
and can be programmed so that it doesn't need any interface.

I was more inclinde towards a web service because my sys admin seems to be
liking pearl, so I thought may be I can built a web service and then he can
create a pearl.NET cosumer. I dont know if that is possible.

Another thought came to my mind as to make a fat client and install it on
the client computer, but I dont think so that is the right thing.
Web application seems impossible because my sys admin hates IIS, I mean he
simple hates IIS.
Anyway I can convince him or any other alternative for that route, becaue I
think web is the ideal way to go.
Click to expand...

Well, don't quote me on it, but research mono, I seem to recall hearing
about a ASP.NET host for Apache...you'll have to look however.
 
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