Real Software Forums

what is the best report writer that can just be a part of realbasic like a plug in or such.

Is it On-Target? If it is, can someone point to some examples of its use in a realbasic project?

thanks,
bill

The contenders:

On-Target
RSReport
The built-in REAL Reports
Valentina Reports

The first 3 have tutorials on the ARBP site (free registration required to access).

Of the four, I'm partial to RSReport and have used it in more than a few projects. The drawback is that you will do more 'coding' to get it to work whereas REAL Reports and On-Target have designers with the REAL Reports designer being integrated into the RB IDE. The Valentina Report tool only works with the Valentina database so it may or may not be of interest to you and it's the most expensive option of the 4.

Thanks for reply Bob,

Looks like RSReport may be what I need. I actually would rather code than fight with a designer. I used Delphi in the past with a product from Navorna Designs called ReportPrinter (or something similar) that I really liked. Super easy, it gave you a bunch of functions to format and print the report. Coding was easy..

thanks again,
bill

Let me drop info about Valentina Reports .

* in the nearest 5-10 days we will introduce totally new Report Engine. Many months of work for our developers, using new graphic libs. Just tons of improves.

* We hope in the end of September introduce
a) for Valentina Studio Pro plugin to manage SqlLite
b) for our new Report Engine to use SqlLite dbs as data source.

===============
Also let me underline one great and unique feature of Valentina Reports -- they work under Valentina Server!
This means that you/user can set in the office a single (!!!) report file, and develop it by multi-user way, or use it ...

You can control WHERE report itself will be generated
a) on the server side, so client can get ready report as e.g . PDF or JPG. Can be great e.g. for iPhone app.
b) on the client side using V4R plugin itself. This can be good not move out load from server CPU and other reasons.


==============
Another big advantage of Valentina Reports over other listed above is:
that Valentina Reports not limited by REALbasic only.

Image that you use something above and tomorrow your customer says -- okay I need web server or I want switch to NET or Cocoa ... You can then trash your reports-job. Correct me if I am wrong.

Valentina Reports, in contrast, works with ALL and ANY API that Valentina supports. from PHP to C++. All 3 platforms. and so on.

And fact that very soon we will introduce SqlLite usage and/or easier migration, this extends usability of Valentina Report Engine.