LazReport

[Lee Jenkins]

Hi all, I've never used Freereport, but I have used FastReport 2.4x through 3.x
quite a bit.

I tried evaluating LazReport a few months ago and had problems with aggregate
functions cause AV's and stalling the program. I thought I'd give it another go
with svn rev.15082 and while I won't rule out the fact that I may be doing
something wrong, I can't seem to get it to act right for anything but the
simplest listing reports without aggregate functions whatsoever.

Has anyone used this component for any significant reports? Again, I've never
used FreeReport per se, only the commercial FastReport version so I'm assuming
that I have at least enough knowledge to build a simple report with aggregates,
but my impression thus far is that the component just seems unusable for me.

Again, I could be just doing something wrong as I'm sure that there were
significant changes between the FreeReport version and FastReport 2x or 3x.

Reporting is significant to an application (well the back office portion) that
I'm hoping to write with Lazarus/Freepascal and without a viable solution, I
stuck with using Delphi or Visual Studio/Mono.

Thanks for any feedback.

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Lee Jenkins
Hi all, I've never used Freereport, but I have used FastReport 2.4x through 3.x
quite a bit.
I tried evaluating LazReport a few months ago and had problems with aggregate
functions cause AV's and stalling the program. I thought I'd give it another go
with svn rev.15082 and while I won't rule out the fact that I may be doing
something wrong, I can't seem to get it to act right for anything but the
simplest listing reports without aggregate functions whatsoever.
Has anyone used this component for any significant reports? Again, I've never
used FreeReport per se, only the commercial FastReport version so I'm assuming
that I have at least enough knowledge to build a simple report with aggregates,
but my impression thus far is that the component just seems unusable for me.
Again, I could be just doing something wrong as I'm sure that there were
significant changes between the FreeReport version and FastReport 2x or 3x.
Reporting is significant to an application (well the back office portion) that
I'm hoping to write with Lazarus/Freepascal and without a viable solution, I
stuck with using Delphi or Visual Studio/Mono.
Thanks for any feedback.

BTW, I've been playing around with PowerPDF today and it looks pretty capable.

[Antonio Sanguigni]

Post by Lee Jenkins
BTW, I've been playing around with PowerPDF today and it looks pretty capable.

Lee, I used it for simple reporting with Delphi 7 and I like it.

Antonio

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Lee Jenkins
BTW, I've been playing around with PowerPDF today and it looks pretty capable.
Lee, I used it for simple reporting with Delphi 7 and I like it.
Antonio

Thanks Antonia,

Hopefully its just something I'm doing wrong, but its hard to say since the
FreeReport lists are not very active except for spammers. :)

[Antonio Sanguigni]

Post by Lee Jenkins
Thanks Antonia,

Oh dear :-)). Broadly speaking, here in Italy, words that terminate with "a"
vowel are feminine ;). So, here is Antonio ^_^ (just joking ;) )

Post by Lee Jenkins
Hopefully its just something I'm doing wrong, but its hard to say since the
FreeReport lists are not very active except for spammers. :)

Well, Graeme reporting is not really bad. I still have to look at it but I
like the idea very much, very versatile.

Antonio

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Lee Jenkins
Thanks Antonia,
Oh dear :-)). Broadly speaking, here in Italy, words that terminate with
"a" vowel are feminine ;). So, here is Antonio ^_^ (just joking ;) )

<looking_sheepish/>
My apologies Antonio, no offense was meant. My brain is too fast for my fingers
sometimes because I knew that!

Post by Lee Jenkins
Hopefully its just something I'm doing wrong, but its hard to say since the
FreeReport lists are not very active except for spammers. :)
Well, Graeme reporting is not really bad. I still have to look at it but
I like the idea very much, very versatile.
Antonio

Yes, I am looking forward to taking a look at it as well. Graeme has excellent
coding skills and a very ordered mind judging from his works I have had the
pleasure to use.

[Michael Van Canneyt]

Post by Lee Jenkins
Hi all, I've never used Freereport, but I have used FastReport 2.4x through 3.x
quite a bit.
I tried evaluating LazReport a few months ago and had problems with aggregate
functions cause AV's and stalling the program. I thought I'd give it another go
with svn rev.15082 and while I won't rule out the fact that I may be doing
something wrong, I can't seem to get it to act right for anything but the
simplest listing reports without aggregate functions whatsoever.
Has anyone used this component for any significant reports? Again, I've never
used FreeReport per se, only the commercial FastReport version so I'm assuming
that I have at least enough knowledge to build a simple report with aggregates,
but my impression thus far is that the component just seems unusable for me.
Again, I could be just doing something wrong as I'm sure that there were
significant changes between the FreeReport version and FastReport 2x or 3x.

I am also a FastReport user:
FreeReport is just an early FastReport 2.x version, so if it worked in
FastReport 2.x, it should work in FreeReport/lazReport.

It's of course possible that during porting, some bugs were introduced.

The Fastreport People told me (back in October) that they planned to port
FastReport 4 to Lazarus in Q1 of this year. Since I haven't seen anything
yet, I assume that some problems popped up. I'm not altogether surprised
because it's not an easy task, given the complexity of FastReport :-)

Michael.

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Michael Van Canneyt

Post by Lee Jenkins
Hi all, I've never used Freereport, but I have used FastReport 2.4x through 3.x
quite a bit.
I tried evaluating LazReport a few months ago and had problems with aggregate
functions cause AV's and stalling the program. I thought I'd give it another go
with svn rev.15082 and while I won't rule out the fact that I may be doing
something wrong, I can't seem to get it to act right for anything but the
simplest listing reports without aggregate functions whatsoever.
Has anyone used this component for any significant reports? Again, I've never
used FreeReport per se, only the commercial FastReport version so I'm assuming
that I have at least enough knowledge to build a simple report with aggregates,
but my impression thus far is that the component just seems unusable for me.
Again, I could be just doing something wrong as I'm sure that there were
significant changes between the FreeReport version and FastReport 2x or 3x.

FreeReport is just an early FastReport 2.x version, so if it worked in
FastReport 2.x, it should work in FreeReport/lazReport.

Agreed. FastReport is an excellent reporting tool and I would like very much to
get it to work, but it appears that remains to be seen as of now.

Post by Michael Van Canneyt
It's of course possible that during porting, some bugs were introduced.
The Fastreport People told me (back in October) that they planned to port
FastReport 4 to Lazarus in Q1 of this year. Since I haven't seen anything
yet, I assume that some problems popped up. I'm not altogether surprised
because it's not an easy task, given the complexity of FastReport :-)

Well that give me an excuse to upgrade, but I am fairly satisfied with FR 3
right now. :)

I can imagine that is must be a fairly daunting task!

[Paul Ishenin]

Post by Michael Van Canneyt
The Fastreport People told me (back in October) that they planned to port
FastReport 4 to Lazarus in Q1 of this year. Since I haven't seen anything
yet, I assume that some problems popped up. I'm not altogether surprised
because it's not an easy task, given the complexity of FastReport :-)

First of all few products are already ported to fpc/lazarus. It is
FastScript - script engine and FastCube - desktop olap engine (pivot table).
Next one will be FastQueryBuilder. It almost works and even sqldb
connection were made exclusively for fpc :)
When all of them will work 100% on lazarus we will start FastReport
port. I hope for that moment lcl will have much less bugs :)

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Paul Ishenin

Post by Michael Van Canneyt
The Fastreport People told me (back in October) that they planned to port
FastReport 4 to Lazarus in Q1 of this year. Since I haven't seen anything
yet, I assume that some problems popped up. I'm not altogether surprised
because it's not an easy task, given the complexity of FastReport :-)

First of all few products are already ported to fpc/lazarus. It is
FastScript - script engine and FastCube - desktop olap engine (pivot table).
Next one will be FastQueryBuilder. It almost works and even sqldb
connection were made exclusively for fpc :)
When all of them will work 100% on lazarus we will start FastReport
port. I hope for that moment lcl will have much less bugs :)
Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

Paul,

That is very good news indeed! I like FastScript very much and I am glad that
it is already ported, but is my version that came with FR3 able to work or must
I upgrade to use it in Laz/FPC?

[Paul Ishenin]

Post by Lee Jenkins
Paul,
That is very good news indeed! I like FastScript very much and I am glad that
it is already ported, but is my version that came with FR3 able to work or must
I upgrade to use it in Laz/FPC?

You need to upgrade your FS version.

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Paul Ishenin

Post by Lee Jenkins
Paul,
That is very good news indeed! I like FastScript very much and I am glad that
it is already ported, but is my version that came with FR3 able to work or must
I upgrade to use it in Laz/FPC?

You need to upgrade your FS version.
Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

Out of curiosity Paul, what is the version I need to be for FPC support?

[Bent Normann Olsen]

Hi,

I'm really looking forward to see a new and improved LazReport.

I'm working on porting an application to MacOSX Carbon, and I've had
troubles using LazReport on Carbon - it crashes.

I've been working on other parts of the application, but will be working on
LazReport on Carbon tomorrow, and will try to locate causes for some
exceptions when trying to print reports, that otherwise is working OK on
LazReport for Win32.

Anybody working on Carbon side of LazReport?

Good work.
Cheers, Normann

-----Original Message-----
From: lazarus-***@lazarus.freepascal.org
[mailto:lazarus-***@lazarus.freepascal.org] On Behalf Of Paul Ishenin
Sent: 14. maj 2008 16:15
To: General mailing list
Subject: Re: [Lazarus] LazReport

Post by Michael Van Canneyt
The Fastreport People told me (back in October) that they planned to port
FastReport 4 to Lazarus in Q1 of this year. Since I haven't seen anything
yet, I assume that some problems popped up. I'm not altogether surprised
because it's not an easy task, given the complexity of FastReport :-)

First of all few products are already ported to fpc/lazarus. It is
FastScript - script engine and FastCube - desktop olap engine (pivot table).
Next one will be FastQueryBuilder. It almost works and even sqldb
connection were made exclusively for fpc :)
When all of them will work 100% on lazarus we will start FastReport
port. I hope for that moment lcl will have much less bugs :)

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Post by Lee Jenkins
Reporting is significant to an application (well the back office portion) that
I'm hoping to write with Lazarus/Freepascal and without a viable solution, I
stuck with using Delphi or Visual Studio/Mono.

I have not user FreeReports or LazReports yet, so can't comment on them.
I wouldn't dismiss Lazarus/Free Pascal that quickly though. ;-)

I have a RTF based report engine which might come in handy as well. I
use it to report off my tiOPF objects, but it can report from TDataset's
as well, or both. You can create custom fields (tags) for use in your
reports as well. So you are only limited to what Free Pascal can do! :)

The RTF report engine was originally written for Delphi and tiOPF. I
ported it to Free Pascal and fpGUI. It should work as-is for Lazarus. I
commented out the image support due to fpGUI lacking JPEG support, but
that should be fairly straight forward to get working with Lazarus (as
it's much closer to how Delphi works). I can email you in private the
original and ported RTF engine if you want. It's one unit and a sample
application.

BTW: I use OpenOffice to view reports and design the rtf report
templates. I have even created a OpenOffice macro to convert the
generated rtf to pdf before it gets viewed by the user.

BTW #2: I still want to have a look at PowerPDF as well. That would be
handy for non-Lazarus based applications as well.


Regards,
- Graeme -


_______________________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Graeme Geldenhuys

Post by Lee Jenkins
Reporting is significant to an application (well the back office portion) that
I'm hoping to write with Lazarus/Freepascal and without a viable solution, I
stuck with using Delphi or Visual Studio/Mono.

I have not user FreeReports or LazReports yet, so can't comment on them.
I wouldn't dismiss Lazarus/Free Pascal that quickly though. ;-)
I have a RTF based report engine which might come in handy as well. I
use it to report off my tiOPF objects, but it can report from TDataset's
as well, or both. You can create custom fields (tags) for use in your
reports as well. So you are only limited to what Free Pascal can do! :)
The RTF report engine was originally written for Delphi and tiOPF. I
ported it to Free Pascal and fpGUI. It should work as-is for Lazarus. I
commented out the image support due to fpGUI lacking JPEG support, but
that should be fairly straight forward to get working with Lazarus (as
it's much closer to how Delphi works). I can email you in private the
original and ported RTF engine if you want. It's one unit and a sample
application.
BTW: I use OpenOffice to view reports and design the rtf report
templates. I have even created a OpenOffice macro to convert the
generated rtf to pdf before it gets viewed by the user.
BTW #2: I still want to have a look at PowerPDF as well. That would be
handy for non-Lazarus based applications as well.

Hi Graeme,

That is the whole point, to use Lazarus/FreePascal! I want freedom of platform!
I already know I that can (and am, for that matter) writing the major (front
office) portion of my application in Laz/FPC.

I'll take a look-see, but I'd rather not have 3rd party requirements for
reporting if I can help it. PowerPDF seems pretty tight to me, even is there is
no banded report designer. Maybe if you would send me what you have for your
rtf engine, I could see how it might be used as a basis for one with PowerPDF.

Fortunately, I will not need to start writing reports for quite a while yet so I
can wait to see how LaReport shapes up. Just knowing I could use PowerPDF
(after playing with it a bit yesterday) is enough for me if LazReport doesn't
seem viable by the time I have to start on reporting. Nice to have options. :)

BTW, I noticed that the PDF export filter that was written for FreeReport uses
PowerPDF for its engine.

Thanks to all for your input!

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Post by Lee Jenkins

Post by Graeme Geldenhuys
BTW #2: I still want to have a look at PowerPDF as well. That would be
handy for non-Lazarus based applications as well.

Hi Graeme,
That is the whole point, to use Lazarus/FreePascal! I want freedom of platform!

I meant non-LCL based apps, but still using Free Pascal compiler. This
would still gives you the freedom of platform.

eg: Generating reports from fpGUI based or Console based applications
using PowerPDF would be cool. I still need to look at the PowerPDF
code, so I don't know if it relies on LCL or not.


Regards,
- Graeme -


_______________________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

[Lee Jenkins]

Post by Graeme Geldenhuys

Post by Lee Jenkins

Post by Graeme Geldenhuys
BTW #2: I still want to have a look at PowerPDF as well. That would be
handy for non-Lazarus based applications as well.

Hi Graeme,
That is the whole point, to use Lazarus/FreePascal! I want freedom of platform!

I meant non-LCL based apps, but still using Free Pascal compiler. This
would still gives you the freedom of platform.
eg: Generating reports from fpGUI based or Console based applications
using PowerPDF would be cool. I still need to look at the PowerPDF
code, so I don't know if it relies on LCL or not.

Ah, my mistake. I believe it does. At the least, I tried removing LCL from the
packages requirements and it would not compile complaining of not finding LCLType...

As you mentioned, I guess you could always use it as a dll/so or console app
from fpGUI based application.

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Post by Lee Jenkins
As you mentioned, I guess you could always use it as a dll/so or console app
from fpGUI based application.

Until I port it to FCL only! ;-)


Regards,
- Graeme -


_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/