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We are moving towards client-side front-end development and wants to use AngularJS for it, I want to know is there any way we could use our crystal reports with AngularJS with it.
Our Server-side is ASP.Net webapi/ MS SQL Server.
It would be lovely if we can use our existing crystal reports, if at all its not possible to use crystal reports, then some experts kindly let us know what would be the other best solution for reporting with a framework like AngularJS.
Thanks and best regards
PS: Its amazing there are so many client-side framework but no reporting framework.
Disclaimer: I work for STOIC
I don't know any integration with Crystal Report built with AngularJS. But if you need a reporting solution built on top of AngularJS, you might want to take a look at STOIC, especially the View Editor component.
I feel that to thoroughly answer your question, we must define what is meant by "reporting." In terms of Crystal Reports, the basic functionality is to prompt the user with a form to enter their parameters for filtering the report, then a view is displayed with the data presented in some layout, usually a data grid, more than one data grid, some charts or graphs, or a combination of all of the above. There are features to drill-down into detail or different sub-reports, to group rows with additional content inserted inline, to affect your data model with code, aka "formulas," and also to modify your query results, using formulas without, actually writing any SQL. Reports can embed Flash, HTML, Java applets, and Silverlight. Reports can be faithfully exported to various formats, namely PDF, Excel, CSV, and Word. The basic functionality of Crystal also allows defining data structures for report exportation, such as XML structured via XSLT. There are SDKs for Java and .Net, and a Javascript API. Reports can be embedded into webpages, rendered inline using javascript, and embedded into Java or .Net applications with a license that allows free distribution. That's just scraping the surface of the feature set, and not even touching the other server platform products offered by SAP, Inc.
Now, if you can do without some of those features, or pick and choose, your options open up greatly. I imagine there are some frameworks out there that support Crystal's entire feature set, but I find the terms to be misleading, and quite often, they're just loaded marketing phrases; for instance, "reports" is often referred to as "views", "grids" or "datagrids" in other frameworks. If you need a canned solution that automatically provides the entire featureset, I think Crystal would be your best bet, and their Javascript API will allow you to display them in a webpage.
There are a few ways I know of but they require Crystal Enterprise Server, or SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence suite, or $$
With Enterprise Server you publish all of your reports which allow you to call them via URL with the parameters. This link/url will generate an enterprise viewer in the browser that initiates the crystal report call.
With BusinessObjects there is also a JavaScript API which essentially does the same thing except you can customize and embed the tools, (I haven't used this before) but still $$
https://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_cr_js_api_en.pdf
Last option is purchase 3rd party like ReCrystalize, but that you have to install on your webserver and runs about 1k bucks.
AngularJS is just a javascript binding framework. Unrelated to server-side products such as Crystal Reports. In order to call initiate the reports from javascript, you need to call some api, or create a client side page like c# that calls the report on the server side.
You can also use a product called DreamFactory which calls an php service or another service which essentially does the same thing.
Hope this helps.
Related
I'm currently evaluating the main FOSS report generators. One of the features I'm looking for is the ability to manipulate the presentation of data when the report is presented on the browser:
Resort the results
Reorder columns
Regroup the results
Filter the data
The idea is to let the users play with the results presented to them, without having to create a new report or modify the underlying query. So:
Does any of the FOSS versions support such features? (I know some commercial versions do, but at this point it's not what I'm looking for)
If (#1 == false), are there any side open-source projects that provide such features?
Would love to get answers regarding either BIRT, JasperReport of Pentaho.
Actually. I did some similar research and couldn't find any software doing true ad hoc reports. OpenReports used to be a good enough thing, but it seems discontinued. What Jasper and birt report servers offer (in the oss version) is more of a reporting template repository and some scheduling / automatic reports. For the ad hoc features you have to get the paid version.
BIRT has a community edition simple report server sample called BIRT Runtime that you can deploy on Tomcat.
However as a web application, its functionality is not comparable to JasperReports Server.
Actuate however, does provide a flagship commercial BIRT Report Server.
OpenReports have some ajax functionalities on web reporting. I am pretty sure that you can use JSF + Jasper Reports to generate a dynamic web report as well.
hope this helps
I have got one project where I need to build a site in Sitecore CMS.
I have never used that CMS.
I want to know that if my programming skills are good because I don't know ASP or ASP.net but do know PHP.
The sites are simple html pages with no logins and processing.
Can I do it few weeks?
I was a PHP person when my company switched to Sitecore, although we had an ASP.net developer.
99% of what is done in Sitecore is achieved without any .net programming requirement. A website consists of data templates, which are defined in the Sitecore desktop environment (much like Windows, but in a browser). Data templates define the fields that each type of page has, the workflow it is in and other content-centric things. Renders are then attached to the template - these are xslt files which take the data provided by the data template and format it into (x)html.
I'd recommend getting enrolled on the Sitecore Developer Training - this is a one day course which will get you fully set up and ready to start building.
http://www.sitecore.net/en/Training.aspx
Sitecore v6 is easier to build with than v5. There's also SDN (sdn.sitecore.net) which has a large amount of documentation and examples.
Also, as Sitecore is only available through Sitecore Partners, you should have access to a knowledgeable Sitecore Professional.
Seems like it's real easy.
http://www.sitecore.net/en/Products/Sitecore-CMS.aspx
Sitecore Makes it Effortless to Create Content and Experience Rich Websites
Sitecore helps you achieve your business goals such as increasing sales and search engine visibility, while being straightforward to integrate and administer. Sitecore lets you deliver sites that are highly scalable, robust and secure, and is built to simplify your life, automate your processes, and let you deliver results faster.
Seriously, this question can't be answered as is. Sitecore CMS can be used by business users with no dev experience and it can be used by developers to do more complicated things. How complicated it is to use Sitecore depends entirely on what exactly you're trying to do. It might be easy, it might be complicated, but without more details it's impossible to know.
I've heard of "Crystal Reports" for years, but I'm really confused why a small ActiveX type of component that just displays and prints out data from databases (does it?) should be considered a whole product within the VS suite of products.
Is it something better, like something for Windows Server that lets you generate report server-side as PDFs or similar which is why its considered so important?
Enlighten me.
Crystal Reports is a very robust (and in many developers' opinions, complicated and painful) tool to build complex reports. It's much more than simply printing what's in the database - taking relational data and transforming it into massive corporate reports with hundreds or thousands of conditions is very time-consuming and difficult. For example, what if the report needs to have product summary sections which can be formatted completely differently based on the qualities or attributes of the product? CR has a scripting model that permits pretty much any transformation imaginable.
To replace Crystal Reports with something you seem to be imagining, would require a data transformation engine; an end-user-friendly UI to write transformation rules and design reports; and a presentation engine to format the reports in a print-friendly way. That definitely sounds like a full-fledged product to me.
The worst thing about CR is that there isn't anything better at what it does.
If what you want to do is what it "likes" to do--dump data from the DB into a formatted page--it's dead simple. If you're willing to tolerate pain & frustration, you can make it do all sorts of fancy things.
It's definitely more than just "an ActiveX control".
It's a whole product because it is supplied as such by the developer, and is installed only optionally. It enables support for Crystal Report files.
And no, it's not a small ActiveX type of component. It comes with a full-fledged report designer and runtime component and is a complete report solution, much like SSRS (SQL Server Report Services, or something - is that what you meant with the thing for Windows Server?). Have look at their web page for more information.
The Crystal Reports that come with Visual Studio are a 'lite' version of the suite of products , see this page for comparison of features between the full and lite versions of 2008
You should try Stimulsoft Reports.Net its better than CR.NET.In this solution there are no ActiveX involved and no merge module and runtimes....
One of the cool things they added was support for binding to .NET and other data providers. This company has been bought by so many companies in the past it has really hurt the product IMO.
Crystal Report is a third part "Reprot Creation" tool.
This comes as build-in with Visual Studio IDE, and using this tool you can create reports in your application.
Its a reporting tool that has a stand alone application for generating reports or reports can be integrated into a .net application.
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Suppose someone is building you a CMS (Content Management System) from scratch. What are the most important features to include and why?
security - OWASP Top 10
user management & user roles
action and view permissions
content versioning and audit
some form of workflow and notifications
i18n support on literals and object versions
normalized database schema design
some form of content import-export
assets management and thumbnail generation for uploads
Valid XHTML (compressed with GZIP)
Rich text editing (e.g FCKeditor) which generates accessible markup
Valid and minified CSS and javascript (e.g using YUI)
automatically generated sitemaps.org document
integration with Google Analytics
automatic RSS feeds
open search support
print css and/or print versions of content
SEO consideration for duplicate content (e.g use of canonical tag)
I think from a developer's perspective it would be an open modular architecture. IMHO there are always things to add which the CMS platform isn't providing out of the box. Also, it should be database-based.
Existing modules should cover the most important tasks: news, contacts, documents, forums, shop, survey, events, image gallery, navigation, links, fulltext-search, login, newsletter, etc.
From the user's perspective I think that the content editor (WYSIWYG) is the most important piece. The ability to edit inside the "live" page is a great feature. Upload of images with automated resizing and the upload of files should be easy.
The existence of page/control and website templates is also very helpful when you're starting with a CMS. Versioning of documents/pages is also a often required feature and a work-flow engine, where there are authors who create content and editors who are allowed to unlock it.
RSS syndication is another important feature that should be available in a modern CMS.
For international site it very important that the CMS had some sort of built-in multi-lingual support.
Then I think a good CMS nowadays must provide tools for Search Enginge Optimization, e.g. there must be a way to define and insert search engine friendly URLs.
Not mentioned already: A CMS system should easily integrate into an existing software infrastucture, so interoparability is a strong requirement.
Example: If your CMS supported WebDav, you win Microsoft Office as editing tools without any extra expenses.
My number one requirement when choosing a CMS system is the ability to skin it easily and control the markup.
Users can be really fussy about getting the layout EXACTLY as they want.
1) WYSIWYG editor. Being able to edit HTML content as if it were in Microsoft Word. That includs the ability to upload your own images.
2) Creating new pages without query strings ie) not 'pages.aspx?pageid=5' but 'contact.aspx'
3) Additional features such as news, photo gallery, blog, user management, etc...
Personally I really like the CMS starter kit Microsoft has available on codeplex. It is very well done and uses XML file storage so it doesn't need a database!
In addition to the things that others have mentioned:
Caching
If you page comprises lots of "pieces" - e.g. a Banner pane, Left pane, Main pane, Right pane and Footer pane, and perhaps each of those will have multiple "widgets" in them, then the effort of constructing the page becomes significant (both in database calls, and in rendering at the web server). Having some intelligent caching that is able to detect when any of the underlying content blocks has changed will make a big different to performance
CMS Matrix may be a useful comparison resource of existing CMS products
The features you need the most will naturally depend on how the CMS is going to be used, and by whom. For some, licensing will be the greatest issue, while for others, some obscure requirement like support for TIFF files could be the thing.
If you want en extensive list of CMS features, take a look at CMS Feature Lists
When working with clients, I often heard a number of requirements that, in my opinion, had little to do with what a modern CMS really needs. Far too often emphasis was on features that should have been in the domain of template designers, such as support for responsive design (whatever that really means), the ability to add brand elements etc.
I compiled a list of the top 5 features a modern CMS needs at http://www.simoahava.com/content-management/modern-cms-top-5-features/
Modular architecture and strong security are the most important features from a technical standpoint. Complete control over content, source code and the software solution itself are all huge perks for any CMS.
Simo Ahava
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If a business needed to connect to a various database and generate PDF mostly reports, what are some good tools. Commercial or Opensource. Non technical users should also be able to generate various reports with good looking charts and tabular data through a report designer tool. As well, we should be able to deploy these charts on the web and generate HTML or PDF.
We looked at various tools like Adobe LiveCycle and haven't looked at Crystal Reports.
I am more the technical person and not really the business guy and I would mind something more techie like Eclipse's BIRT (business reporting tool). Everything looks good with Birt and does exactly what we might need but the charts don't look that impressive.
And with Crystal Reports, once you bring in those vendors, they sell a bunch of stuff that you normally don't need and it is impossible to get stuff done. But I could be wrong.
Commercial and for large applications:
BI Publisher
Telerik reporting looks great. Main advantage is that you can create your reports , and store them in dll assemblies that can be used on the web and on the desktop viewer. In the same time, with all exports needed.
Disadvantage is that report designer is still in Visual Studio. DotNet only.
I used abcPDF by webSuperGoo product. It was fine and simple for quick develoment.
I used this about 5 years ago so it should be a bit more up to date by now.
Livecycle Forms is a good choice. The whole thing is about constructing PDF documents starting with a template which you design and injecting data into the template in the form of XML. The final result is a flat or interactive PDF. Livecycle Forms was designer to produce interactive PDFs but it is pretty simple to flatten the documents when rendering is completed.
You may have to write a decent amount of custom code to construct the XML documents, but the PDF construction capabilities are pretty impressive. If you have a complicated workflow, the Livecycle package also has a workflow designer that you can use.
See this question for Java solutions...
Here's my honest (yet biased) answer copied from there:
i-net Crystal-Clear
Simple and easy-to-use API of both the report engine and the Java report viewer.
Can export into any major format like PDF, HTML, SVG, XLS, etc., as well as into a Java applet viewer. (See samples)
Comes with a free and powerful graphical report template designer. (See video guide)
Installs as a WAR file on your application server or can be used as a library within your own application.
Great technical support (you usually get an answer in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks)
Charts based on JFreeChart (so includes Stock charts).
Can read Crystal Reports templates. (for a lot of customers, this is the killer feature since you don't have to re-create all your old Crystal Reports templates)
Great and competitive pricing - effectively costing "less than open source" if you count in support costs - which you definitely should.
Free 90-day trial.
[full disclosure: Yes, I work for the company that produces this. But it's still my honest (though subjective and biased) answer to the question. ;)]