Re: Next assignment - Reports

I think if you look for one tool to do it all you will end up with nothing
because there just isn't that tool out there. Maybe in the end you will
have a commercial product like MRC and one like what we are talking about
here, who knows.

The HTML to PDF is a cool idea. Here's some open source Java code to do
exactly that:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-2006/jw-0410-html.html

HTH,
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com


On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

It seems to me that no single tool will work for all reports, all
end-users, all runtime environments, and all developers. Even with HTML
and PDF formats available, spool files still have their place, even if
for nothing more than printing receipts for over-the-counter
transactions.

Another avenue that I'd like to explore would be generating HTML stream
files from RPG programs using something like CGIDEV2, then converting
the HTML file to a PDF document as an option.

I have docuPrinter installed on my PC, which allows me to convert HTML
files to PDF documents, but I'd like to explore server based products
and options that can be evoked from batch jobs.

I've read about a number of open-source Java and Python solutions for
converting HTML to PDF files. IBM Developer Works is a good place to
start. It would be nice to pass a couple parameters (HTML file name,
PDF file name) from an RPG program and evoke some utility to convert the
HTML file to PDF.

Any suggestions?

Nathan.



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On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Aaron Bartell wrote:

In my mind the interface with RPG is necessary where there is an
in-line
business process needing to be done. For instance, you could have a
power
user develop a BIRT/Jasper report and the RPG would occupy that report
during nightlies with invoice information and convert it to PDF to be
emailed to an end customer.

The scenario you described is also a reality, but there are many other
scenarios out there that could benefit from this RPG interface. In
the end
the main thing the RPG interface is doing is keeping RPG programmers
from
having to learn a whole bunch of Java.

HTH,
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

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