Options for printing

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Hi Everyone,

I’m reaching out to the wider Wisej audience to (hopefully) find out what solutions you have managed to come up with when it comes to printing, what has and has not worked.

If you have any suggestions or can point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

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Hi Andrew,

let me add a few lessons learned:

  1. If you already have something in use to generate reports/printouts, continue using that. Wisej is very flexible when it comes to integration and you might be able to leverage prior technology investments.
  2. If you are not yet set for a specific technology, make an assessment on what you’re after. In terms of reporting/lists/long database queries, a reporting tool such as Crystal Reports, Reporting Services (the desktop version), or similar tools make the most sense.
    The viewer part is easy. If you need a web-based designer (probably something to go for in an ISV context), you can either wrap an ASP.NET control or use a JavaScript-based designer component. Stimulsoft offers a lot of flexibility in this regard.
    See https://www.stimulsoft.com/en/products/reports-js
  3. If your main concern is to generate form-based printouts, a decent PDF library might be a better option, such as iTextSharp.
  4. If you need document processing and document generation similar to Microsoft Word, you might want to check out TX Text Control. If this is what you are looking for, I can send you a little sample to get you started. We have used it in an application to generate certificates and tabular printout for REST data sources. The design is entirely based on a Word-like WYSIWYG editor with enhanced mail merge functionality. Pretty cool stuff wrapped up for Wisej based on an ASP.NET control.
    See https://www.textcontrol.com/products/asp-dotnet/tx-text-control-dotnet-server/overview/

Hope this helps

Best wishes
Thomas

  • Andrew Hills
    Thank you Thomas. Reading from what Edmond and Andreas have mentioned, building a PDF on the server seems to be the cleanest way forward, however, I hope that some of these other companies like DevExpress get on board with some native Wisej controls that we can just drop into our apps. I’ve had a chat with one of the support guys at DevX about Wisej, so fingers crossed they jump onboard and offer something native.
  • Thomas (ITG)
    Frank posted a nice blog article on how to wrap up DevExpress controls for Wisej: https://wisej.com/blog/integration1/
  • Ngabo Adrian
    The DevExpress Integration demonstrated in the mentioned blog is not so much useful and relevant because the DevExpress Controls used are rarely used in normal applications. We are still expecting you to CLEARLY demonstrate how to used common DevExpress Controls which are even more frequently requested on this forum like DevExpress Reports, DataGridControl and others from DevExpress. Normally, we need demonstrations based on MSSQL Server Database. Thank you
  • Luca (ITG)
    If you need custom support or training contact sales. The devexpress controls using the aspnet wrapper are old aspnet controls based on the asp.net page cycle and we have already provided you with working samples. Accessing the database is standard ADO.NET and we don’t provide training or support for that.
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Hi Andrew,
if you are fine with creating reports on the server as PDF and just downloading them to the client,
you can basically use any report engine you like. The only specific thing you have to integrate in Wisej is the download of the PDF.
You can use the Wisej PDFViewer or download the file and open it with your prefered PDF-Viewer.
We have already used the following Report Engines with Wisej in our projects:
CrystalReports, List&Label, ActiveReports, MS Reporting Services (Desktop version, without SqlServer), Stimulsoft, DevExpress Reporting.
Most of them ship also with a Web-ReportViewer. For Stimulsoft, ActiveReports and DevExpress even a Web-ReportDesigner is available.
Especially if you are generating huge reports with thousand of pages, and you have to generate the whole PDF just for a Preview,
you might run into performance issues. Using a Web-ReportViewer component can avoid such problems.
You might also take a look on this older thread, that shows how to integrate the Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms.
https://wisej.com/support/question/aspnetcontrol
Andreas
  • Andrew Hills
    Thank you Andreas. I’ve used DevExpress in the past but only in a desktop application, not ASPX, so will be good to have a play with the integration.
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We usually build a PDF on the server and deliver it to the client for reports.

Using iTextSharp.

  • Andrew Hills
    Thanks for that Edmond, it looks like a pretty good library.
  • edmond girardi
    With VisualWeb Gui we used to use a lot of Crystal Reports – which is still available from SAP as the free version for use in Visual Studio. Not sure how this would integrate with WiseJ however. It can deliver PDF, view in browser first and allow them to save as PDF as well.
  • Carlos Lino
    Working reports on the server side, don’t you think guys it will generate a huge traffic on the server or even in the network when you have like 300 users online?
  • Thomas (ITG)
    Well, report processing on the client side will require all data to be sent to the client with formatting and processing done in the browser. It depends on what you’re after. The kind of apps that I think of make more sense with server-side processing.
  • edmond girardi
    Depending on the type of reports needed – if they don’t need to be “up to the second real-time” we generate them ahead of time on a schedule – like every 30 minutes or so – so that we don’t have all users basically running the same reports on the fly. For real time on the flly reports – to not bog down your webserver you can have a “reporting server” create the actual report and pass the PDF itself or just the path to it to the WISEJ app so it can pick it up from a network drive and deliver it to client. Send message to the other server in another thread and wait for the response – show a spinner in the meantime – when you get response back – deliver the PDF to client.
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