So what is it like!!!

rbuser

I showed off a running copy of the Server Edition to a number of software
friends (including Dev Express employees, who are use to excellent software)
and all wanted to do the same thing: "Wow!... can you leave this up so I can
show a friend?" Server edition is very easy to work with and I believe once
people start seeing it will have similar reactions that I have seen, and
fork out the dough to get a copy.

I am a bit concerned about blowing the band width of my web service so I am
not going to leave it up long (and it is Saturday so I am not too worried)
but if you want to get a look at a running copy of the server edition (note
that this is just an out-of-the-box demo and runs on poor hardware and the
BDE):

**PLEASE** respect band width issues. Don't hammer the site.

www.annuitypeople.com/cgi-bin/report.dll

Some notes:

If you aren't getting a good response it is probably because the side is
getting hammored--it normally responds very well.

Try the 'print' icon when viewing a report.

Respond here if you got a chance to look at it.

Ed Dressel
Team DM

rbuser

Very nice...I tried it Saturday morning at response times were very
good. I was able to navigate and print with no real delays. Nice job!

Do you know if there is any plan for a web based report designer.
If a user could do that as well as print over the web that would...well...
change a lot of things.


Joseph Gordon

rbuser

> Do you know if there is any plan for a web based report designer.

You could probably wrap the current designer in an Active-X control but as
far as doing a JavaScript designer, I would bet the farm that no one would
attempt that with todays technology.

Ed Dressel
Team DM

rbuser

> If a user could do that as well as print over the web that would...well...

One other note: You could expose a client side application that can do this.
The reporting service link is two tear: ISAPI DLL and then I have a separate
reporting application/service. I could have sent out a client side app that
you could connect directly to the reporting service. I could see exposing
report editing in that, but then there would be security issues.

Ed Dressel
Team DM

rbuser

Looks perfect, good respons from here.

Ton

rbuser

"Ed Dressel" wrote in message news:3d7a1ab8$1@dm500....

Wow, I'm impressed! It's even better than I was expecting it to be, and my
expectations were high. Great job, D-M!!!

Thanks, Ed, for setting up the demo and sharing it with us.

Mike

nardmoseley

Thanks Ed!

As Mike Leftwich has suggested we will be launching a demo server of our
in own. We're going to have to dedicate some hardware for this so it may
take a week or two to get it together.

Couple of comments for those surfing Ed's report server:

1. Try Report Forms\AutoSearch to see the ask at runtime functionality.
Very very cool.

2. Try the print button to see the PDF generation.

3. Ed and I have discussed this, but I want to point out to others that
the report explorer folder images and other images generated by the
server will look much much better if the web machine has its color
settings set on something greater than 256 colors. The report explorer
should look as good as the standard report explorer included in RB Pro
and Enterprise.

rbuser

I have a look the Report Forms\AutoSearch and see the ask at runtime
functionality. Yes, it's quite cool. But I still have a question, can I pass
a parameter in the Client side, and ask Sever to generate the AutoSearch
Feild in the backgroud?

Cheers,

Tao

rbuser

As the bandwidth is well within my limits, I have left the server up and
running for now.

Ed Dressel
Team DM

rbuser

Hi Ed,

I hope your on commission.
After seeing the demo live, I purchased the server

thanks !
Ron

rbuser

> I hope your on commission.

I can tell you where to send a check... it is sweet stuff. I know if DM
does well, RB will get better, and that is my commission ;-)


Just let others know.

Ed Dressel

nardmoseley

Not sure I understand the question. The AutoSearch fields need to be
predefined prior to running the report. This report is executing on the
server side in much the same manner as it would execute in a single tier
application. You can programmatically use the ReportVolume.OnLoadReportEnd
event to do server side preparations for a report def that is loaded from a
file or database. For a report on a data module or form you can use the
module's OnCreate event handler.

For a client application, the AutoSearch parameter values can be passed to
the server from the ClientReport.OnReceiveAutoSearchFields event. The server
does this internally.

rbuser

Hi, Nard

It looks like what I need. Now my report use AutoSearchField like this way:

procedure PrintPurchaseOrder(aSeqNo: Integer);
begin
...
ppReport.Template.Load;
ppReport.CreateAutoSearchCriteria('Master', 'SeqNo', soEqual,
IntToStr(aSeqNo), false);
ppReport.Print;
...
end;

The aSeqNo is a parameter pass in runtime. Could you tell me how can I pass
this aSeqNo from ClientReport to Server and ask rsServer or rsWebTier pass
this to the Server side ppReport. Then in the IE don't show any autosearch
form, just direct show the report.

Many thanks!

Tao

rbuser

Looks good, sadly I own it already but have barely installed it. Still
working thru 7.0 stuff.

Anyway, here are my concerns:
1) If the report is being viewed by the user and they click the print
button to send it to pdf, is the report regenerated, or is the 'current
report' sent to pdf?
2) When the 2nd window comes up containing the printed pdf, can we somehow
turn off the toolbars and such (in the javascript call)? I typically like
to hide everything so the only thing you see is the Acrobat items.
3) I have several reports with 'autosearch' criteria now. However, I plug
in the autosearch information at runtime based on other things so the user
never sees the form - is that possible?
4) Can you lead me down the road on what it would take to replace the
autosearch functionality? I do not like the way the autosearch is
implemented in RB - I want much more control over it, with drop down
selectable lists, etc. So, what I would like to do is frontend the report
running with my OWN custom built query screen and then call the report
providing the autosearch values. What would that take?
5) How do I make a webpage with a link on it, that just happens to run a
report? (Not using the report explorer).

I have read your manual all the way to the webtier stuff, so I apoligize of
some of this is covered.

Ed - Thanks for showing me what it will look like!!!!!

Wayne

rbuser

somehow

I think Adobe sets this. Donno what can be changed. It would probably be in
the rendering of the PDF (I know you can disable the print button somehow).
Contact Waler or Praggan.

plug

One of my first questions to them at I hear that it is. I have not done
anything with autosearch but it sounds like I am going to get to. Here is
there response (from Jim Bennett):


You can always create custom autosearch dialogs for a windows application as
shown in the installed autosearch demos. For the server edition, we don't
have any demos. It is possible to create a custom web content provider
descendent to show a custom autosearch dialog for the web tier. We will
have to come up with a demo in the future which shows how to do this.




Here is a link:

http://annuitypeople.com/CGI-Bin/Report.dll?content=viewer&volume=Report F
iles&name=Fish%20Heads%5CBiolife&folder=v1d1&explorer=dynamic&frameset=1

Ed Dressel
Team DM

nardmoseley

I'll have to think about this one and try to determine what is feasible.

Are you looking for a ClientReport solution or a WebTier solution?

Where does the SeqNo paramter come from. Is a record that the users
selects from a list or a grid?


P.S. This is should have been a new thread.

nardmoseley

The web tier has the ability to cache the page objects that it has
received from the server. The web tier only asks for pages from the
server as needed. So if the user has previewed page 1 of 50, then only
page 1 has been send from the server to the client.

For a pdf request the web tier would use cached pages and then ask for
additional pages from the server. Unless the session on the report
server has timed out, the report server could incrementally generate the
remaining pages without recreating the query, etc.


I think this is related to acrobat. Might be able to write some java
script to do this via an adobe ActiveX interface. I can research this in
the future, but honestly we are buried now trying to get D7 support
completed, so it may be a while.



You can replace the autosearch panels as in RB Enterprise. We will be
preparing some examples in the near future and we'll post an
announcement to this newsgroup at that time.

Sound like you want something a little different. I think it is doable,
wait until we get the examples I mentioned above completed and I can
help you work on numbers 3 and 4. The web tier is built around the
concept of content provider classes and these classes can be replaced -
so I think it will be doable.



Notice that when you place your mouse over a report in the report
explorer that the status bar in IE shows the url plus some params. That
is the string required to run the report on the web tier.

Example:
http://127.0.0.1/rbWebPub/report.dll?content=viewer&volume=Report
Forms&name=Basic\Biolife Table&framset=1

So the parameters here are

content=viewer (type of content is report viewer)
volume=Report Forms (the volume name)
Name=Basic\Biolife Table (the full path name to the report)
frameset=1 (show the framset with the toolbar etc., this is required)



--
Nard Moseley
Digital Metaphors Corporation

rbuser

1) Perfect...

somehow
like

I apologize for being unclear, but I am referring to the IE
toolbars/menus/etc. (You know the parameters when you open a new browser
window). I would rather see that and did not know how easily we could
customize it, since it is the server stuff that is generating that html.


a

Ok....should have turned on the status bar...hehe. Seriously, this brings
up another question. I do not necessarily want to use the report explorer
when doing reports on the web. I am wanting them to click one of my custom
links, which I will then bring up a report on the server. I could build the
URL as above, but then it has links back to the explorer and such - which I
would not want. Again, this all stems around #3 and #4 for me as I have
custom query screen built already, that pass parameters on a url which in
turn causes a RB report to be generated and returned via pdf (with my own
custom solution). So, I would want to do that same sort of thing using
your server product. Call some report via a link, have your previewer come
up, possibly have some 'back' link instead of the explorer link you have,
etc.


Wayne

nardmoseley

Thanks for the feedback on what you are trying to accomplish. I will
work on creating some examples. We're still working on getting RB7 for
D7 and D5. So the examples will come in a few weeks. Thanks for your
patience.