Is it possible to manipulate SSRS reports from any programming language. I mean to add custom columns to the table from coding itself?
Notionally you can build and modify any SSRS report with any language that can produce XML (so anything that can amend a file). I've not seen it done and would love to see some concrete examples as further answers. However, here is the Microsoft resource on the topic which includes a link to a .Net walkthrough: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa179499(v=sql.80).aspx
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I have spent the days looking for an Opensource JavaDoc editor or a way to edit JavaDocs easily or creating package-info files and come back empty.
I am basically after a way to change the way the packages are listed. The automation framework I work on is undergoing some potential future changes. These changes in a nutshell will organise our test scripts in a way where they are split up into business areas and then into smaller packages of business functions within that area.
We use IntelliJ and the default JavaDoc generator creates the JavaDocs in a way where it makes a list of all the packages, what I want to do is have it create a list of the main packages (business areas) and then the sub packages within that contain our test scripts (business functions).
For example:
BusinessAreaOne contain BusinessFunctionOne, BusinessFunctionTwo and BusinessFunctionThree.
BusinessAreaTwo Contains BusinessFunctionFour and BusinessFunctionFive.
The BusinessFunction packages in turn contain scripts that cover just that business function.
I haven't been able to find an editor that does what I would like and I don't think editing the files manually is practical each time there is an update.
If there is no opensource java editor can do this are there any suggestions of a work around?
As I mentioned I have tried creating package-info files but as far as I can tell you can only add a description to that package. Is there any tutorials out there or does anybody know a way I can get it to display the list of packages within the selected package?
Thanks in advance.
Javadoc doesn't treat package hierarchies as nested hierarchies, it just flattens them all into a list, as you probably noticed, so your business functions will just appear as entries in the list between the business areas.
Looking for a Javadoc editor is not going to help you because the Javadocs you end up with is the output from the Javadoc compilation process, and there's no specific tag you can put in your code that will influence the compilation process in the way you're looking for.
You would have to write something to override Javadoc's implementation of its HTML formatter specifically for the package list using:
Javadoc Doclets
You can customize the content and format of the Javadoc tool's output by using doclets. The Javadoc tool has a default "built-in" doclet, called the standard doclet, that generates HTML-formatted API documentation. You can modify or subclass the standard doclet, or write your own doclet to generate HTML, XML, MIF, RTF or whatever output format you'd like. Information about doclets and their use is at the following locations:
Javadoc Doclets
You would use your own implementation of the Standard Doclet, finding the right class to override - try looking first at the PackageDoc class. I'm going through this learning process myself at the moment, but here's the info on Doclet and there's a link at the bottom of that page to the source code which will illustrate how to do it.
Of course there could be an easier way of doing it and if I discover it I'll come back to update this answer.
I need help on this...
Especially since I don't know where to start..
I am an IT undergraduate and, along with my groupmates, is now undergoing on-the-job training in a company.
SCENARIO:
The company asked us to create a program that will generate a report and store it in a database.
The database that will be used is MySQL.
As for what language to use, we are considering VB.Net, Java, PHP.
The program must be able to :
generate a report that will be sent through email to an office
store in a database
collect all reports, collate those reports
generate a new report which will then be sent to their main office
then store it in their own databse...
For now,
we are still trying to determine how the program will run and what language will be used that has the capability of reading and extracting data from a text file (can either be a word document or a PDF file).
The company also wants the program to be online-ready for future expansion.
Now, our problem is
Is there a way to extract data from a PDF or Word file using either Java, PHP, VB then store it in the MySQL DB?
if there is, can it be implemented without using any 3rd party software?
the reason why we chose to use either a PDF or Word file type is that, the file should be printable for archive purposes.
What programming language can we easily use to be able to achieve our problem above?
I would like to apologize if the info I am giving is a bit messed up. I will be giving additional information once we are able to talk wth the company this week.
If there is a problem with the way I posted this, please forgive me. I am just trying my best to provide you with the information the best I could.
I'll answer for Java as it is what I use at work.
You can easily extract text from Word files or build a new Word file with Apache POI
As for PDF, iText or PDFBox both does a pretty nice job.
Why can't you use 3rd party software? If you could, I would recommend something like How to read PDF files using Java?.
Or, to read a .doc file: http://www.roseindia.net/tutorial/java/poi/readDocFile.html
Anyway, if you can't use 3rd party tools, why not read the specifications and figure out how to extract the text from PDF, DOC, and DOCX files?
Here you can find DOC specifications: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313118.aspx
Here you can find the PDF format specification: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
Good luck!
I'm working on automating our company invoicing system. Currently all data is stored in our local MySQL database and someone manually updates an excel spreadsheet and then merges this data into a MS Word template. The goal is to automate this process so that the invoice can be generated from our intranet website as a PDF.
My original plan was to create a template in HTML/CSS and use wkhtmltopdf to generate the PDF but I ran into problems with getting a repeatable header and footer on each page. thead and tfoot aren't supported by Webkit and the fix suggested in this other question does not seem to work either.
So I then stumbled on using XML and XSL-FO, the latter I know nothing about. Is this the best path to take? Are there any libraries or utilities out there that will make converting my HTML+CSS into XML+XSL-FO easier? Are there any other alternatives I'm overlooking?
EDIT
Currently the server is CentOS Linux with a MySQL database. All other code is currently in PHP currently but that may change as the whole system is being revamped. Linux and MySQL will almost certainly remain, though.
For your requirement, XSL-FO might just do the trick. It is much cleaner to produce the pdf's directly from the data, then going the cumbersome html path, unless you need to display the html as well, then you might consider converting from html to pdf, but it will always be messy.
You can get xml results from mysql quite easily (mysql --xml) and then you write one (or several) xsl-fo stylesheet for the data. then, you cannot only produce pdfs, but also postscript files or rtf's with some processors.
XSL-FO has its limitations tho, but for your situation, it should suffice.
I admit, the learning curve can be steep, and maintaining xslt-stylesheets can get very tiring, but as you start knowing more about it, you end up writing less code.
another possibility is to do the whole thing in e.g. java or c# - send select statements and loop the results and iteratively build the pdf using a library like iText.
You could try JODReports or Docmosis as less-code intensive options. You supply Word or OpenOffice Writer documents to act as templates and use these engines to manipulate/populate the templates then spit out the documents in the format(s) you require. This may mean your existing Word-templates can be used directly which should save you some effort/time.
iText is another library that will let you build and pump out PDFs from code. It's pretty good.
If you cloud use ASP.NET for web you can use free ReportViewer library and designer for automated of publishing PDF-s.
Here is some references:
http://gotreportviewer.com
http://weblogs.asp.net/srkirkland/archive/2007/10/29/exporting-a-sql-server-reporting-services-2005-report-directly-to-pdf-or-excel.aspx
If you're OK using .NET and C#, you could use DotPdf from Atalasoft (obligatory disclaimer: I work for Atalasoft and wrote most of DotPdf). The Generating namespace is geared for exactly what you're trying to do: automate report generation. From the very basics, you could just create docs directly with the toolkit or you can create template documents that have unpopulated text fields that you can reload and fill later (see here and here for examples).
I've been having a look at making changes to the partial classes generated from a DBML file. I was reading into using the sqlmetal.exe tool but it appears that you can't do much customisation of what it actually spits out.
I'm wanting to make changes to the file for serialization purposes, I'd like to add the Data Member Attribute to specified properties in the generated partial classes.
Is this possible to do using the sqlmetal.exe tool or would I need to write my own tool for the file generation?
You could check out T4 templates or CodeSmith for file generation.
No it is not. You can accomplish this with Entity Framework.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jkowalski/archive/2008/05/12/transparent-lazy-loading-for-entity-framework-part-1.aspx
Code written by Jaroslaw Kowalski works much the same way that Linq to SQL does.
It has some issues, but you can do everything with it, because you have the source. I'm going to publish my version soon(support for stored procedures, improved databinding experience and many other useful features)
If you want the datacontract and datamember attributes to be added, simply change the "Serialization Mode" property in the L2S designer's datacontext properties from "None" to "Unidirectional". All entity classes will then be datacontracts, and their members will be datamembers...
The upcoming Beta version of Entity Developer will contain highly customizable T4-like templates for code generation.
Also we have added functionality to divide the generated code into separate files.
I have a rather large LINQ2SQL for a project that I am working on. I must confess that I primarily use the WYSIWYG editor provided by Visual Studio to manage and build the structure. I am starting to run into a problem when it comes to locating entities on the diagram and just working with it in general.
Is there a better WYSIWYG tool -- better than the one provided by Visual Studio -- out there that can assist in the management of the LINQ2SQL dbml file?
I don't know of any alternatives unfortunately for the linq2sql designer.
EDIT:
Further thought on this since comments....
While not a WYSIWYG you could look into SQL Metal (cmd line) to generate/work with the linq2sql generated files.
It does have an open source UI for it now also.
Check out http://csainty.blogspot.com/2008/02/linq-to-sql-sqlmetalexe.html for some info on it.
If you're using the WYSIWYG tool just to build database structures, you might want to move over to using the "Entity Framework" and use some other tool to design the database structure.
You need to give some serious thought to how you are approaching this problem. There may be commercial products out there that meet your needs, but there isn't anything freely available that comes even close. I haven't seen any clear reviews of commercial tools in this regard.
The Linq2Sql O/R Designer doesn't scale, as you've unfortunately found out the hard way. Something like SQLMetal will scale much better, but it's not a perfect solution either.
Unfortunately, it can be very painful to switch from using the O/R Designer to SQLMetal as they don't share as much code underneath the covers as you would hope.
If you are trying to use a large database with Linq2Sql, you almost have to find and adopt a commercial tool of some sort. One free option worth considering is Damien Guard's LinqToSql T4 Templates, but it's not even close to a WYSIWYG tool.
Switching to a more capable ORM is also going to be difficult.
I wrote a blog entry on this subject some time ago and I've rehashed a lot of this already in this answer:
Do not use the Visual Studio 2008 LinqToSql O/R Designer
Good luck.
Check out my add-in at http://www.huagati.com/dbmltools/
It does not replace the designer, but it adds a pile of missing functionality to the designer, so it makes the designer easier to use.